Author Archives: andreisimut

Mădălina Vârtejanu-Joubert

Centre Gustave Glotz – UMR 8585 Paris, France

Le concept de pouvoir dans le judaïsme :
Réflexions sur la Bible comme modèle

The Conception of Power in Judaism: The Bible as a Model

Abstract: The paper explores the way the Bible works as a model in the field of Jewish political theory. Departing from the well-known monarchic principle, it describes the “diarchic” system of the Second Temple Period, and the “three crowns” theory invented by the Tannaitic rabbis. The diarchy recognizes two political domains, sacerdotal and royal, while the “three crowns” theory divides the public domain into the “crown of the Torah”, the “priestly crown” and the “crown of the kingship”. It appears that the Bible functions as a legitimizing device, through quotation and interpretation, and not as a repository of an immutable conception of power.

Keywords: Judaism; Bible; Canon; Rabbinic Judaism; Political theory.

1. Introduction

Dans les lignes qui suivent nous nous proposons d’explorer la portée de la notion de « modèle biblique » et, par la même occasion, d’interroger la valeur de la canonicité textuelle et culturelle. Notre réflexion s’est engagée suite à la participation au colloque « Modèles bibliques du pouvoir », organisé par le Collège « Nouvelle Europe », en janvier 2005. Ce sera donc le concept de pouvoir qui nous servira de fil conducteur dans cet examen des rapports qu’entretiennent les communautés historiques aux textes qu’elles déclarent canoniques.

Une première clarification méthodologique s’impose. Le concept de « modèle » a, au moins, une double acception : (a) le modèle en tant qu’agencement de traits propre à la Bible et (b) le modèle en tant que règle que la postérité choisit de suivre.

D’une part, on retrouve dans la Bible la description de plusieurs formes de pouvoir ; la mise en lumière de leurs traits fondamentaux équivaut à la codification d’un « modèle ». Par exemple, la monarchie est un « modèle » de pouvoir tout comme la « dyarchie » en est un autre. Cette description doit être cependant nuancée en réalisant quand on réalise que le texte est lui-même une sublimation de la réalité et qu’il se place à la frontière entre l’observable et le normatif. Par exemple, en examinant le récit de la fondation monarchique, nous avons accès non pas à une description historique des faits mais à la mémoire collective qui a façonné cette histoire : il s’agit dans ce cas, d’un modèle de transition politique, dont nous avons examiné, ailleurs, la structure et la signification[1].

D’autre part, l’histoire de la constitution de la Bible en tant que texte et, par ailleurs, son caractère canonique font qu’elle fonctionne comme « paradigme » ou, plus exactement, comme support d’une exégèse légitimante pour les générations successives l’ayant adoptée en partie ou en totalité. L’aspect « paradigmatique » se manifeste non seulement par rapport à la Bible prise comme un tout, mais également dans le processus de rédaction et de composition des livres qui en font partie. L’exemple le plus parlant est peut-être celui des livres des Chroniques qui, écrits à l’époque perse, reprennent, dans une nouvelle perspective, le trame deutéronomique des livres des Rois. Toute l’histoire royale de Juda et d’Israël est réécrite en prenant comme modèle, ou comme sub-texte, une version antérieure. Autre exemple, le portrait de Moïse dans les livres de l’Exode et des Nombres, présente de traits royaux : le portrait royal a servi de « modèle » à la caractérisation d’un leader à son tour exemplaire.

Devant la problématique du « modèle » dans la Bible, l’historien trouve ainsi plusieurs directions de recherche : l’analyse des institutions, l’analyse du discours idéologique, l’aspect historiographique et l’aspect exégétique. La distinction entre ces divers plans ne s’opère pas toujours facilement, en fait presque jamais facilement, car l’analyse des institutions passe par l’analyse du discours idéologique, et celle-ci par l’analyse de l’aspect exégétique. Il est néanmoins important pour le chercheur de souligner les pièges méthodologiques qui guettent sa démarche, dans le but de mieux situer ses résultats et au besoin, de les relativiser.

Beaucoup d’études ont été consacrées à l’influence exercée par la royauté biblique et par des figures royales de premier ordre, comme David et Salomon. Cependant le principe monarchique n’épuise pas la « pensée politique » de la Bible, ni ne représente le seul modèle pour « l’exégèse politique » des écrits postérieurs. Cet exposé est donc conçu en contrepoint, en voulant amener à discussion des éléments un peu moins abordés et apporter au débat des angles de vue nouveaux.

En reprenant les distinctions méthodologiques énoncées dans le préambule, la première partie sera consacrée au modèle à la valeur « explicative » tandis que la deuxième s’attachera au modèle à la valeur de « paradigme » (si ce pléonasme n’est pas trop scandaleux). Plus précisément, nous allons traiter d’abord l’alternance et la coexistence du principe monarchique avec le principe « dyarchique », pour nous arrêter ensuite sur l’utilisation du texte biblique par la théorie constitutionnelle du judaïsme rabbinique.

2. Le roi et le prêtre : entre monarchie et dyarchie

Dans l’antiquité hébraïque le principe monarchique connaît deux variantes : la doctrine de la prééminence royale et celle de la prééminence sacerdotale. L’idéologie royale est sans doute la plus ancienne : elle figure en effet dans des textes qui sont essentiellement datés d’avant l’exil : je pense aux livres de Samuel, à certains écrits prophétiques comme ceux d’Isaïe par exemple, au livre du Deutéronome, à la plupart des Psaumes, aux livres des Rois, qui, malgré une rédaction deutéronomiste post-exilique, contiennent beaucoup de matériaux datant de l’époque du Premier Temple. L’idéologie royale ne s’éteint évidemment pas avec l’exil mais elle n’aura plus le monopole sur la façon de penser le politique ; le principe monarchique se verra même concurrencé par l’idéologie du partage des domaines de l’autorité entre le roi et le prêtre. C’est le principe de la « dyarchie » qui voit le jour, lequel principe laissera son empreinte sur les institutions et les discours des écrits juifs à l’époque du Second Temple.

Il n’est, somme toute, pas étonnant de constater que la chute du royaume judéen sous les coups de l’armée de Nabuchodonosor II, la transformation de la Judée en province de l’empire néo-babylonien et, peu de temps après, en satrapie perse, conduit à une reformulation des principes d’autogouvernement. La descendance davidique demeure certes, toujours légitime, mais elle doit faire face à l’ascension d’un nouveau type d’autorité qui est, elle, effective – celle du Grand prêtre. C’est probablement le désir du pouvoir perse de ne pas encourager l’affirmation de la lignée royale à la tête de la communauté nationale post-exilique qui a contribué à asseoir l’autorité du Grand prêtre. La documentation ne nous permet pas d’aller plus loin dans la formulation des hypothèses quant à l’origine de ce processus, mais il demeure pour nous comme un fait marquant, indiquant l’adaptation du judaïsme, la solution qu’il a adoptée pour parer à la déliquescence de son état politique. L’entrée en scène du sacerdoce et la constitution d’un discours à la fois sur le partage du pouvoir et sur la prééminence du Grand prêtre constituent une première réponse. Plus tard, après la destruction du Second Temple, le judaïsme va en formuler une autre, celle des « trois couronnes » autrement dit, du partage du domaine public entre trois autorités : l’autorité de la Loi, celle de la prêtrise et celle de la royauté. Mais nous nous pencherons sur cette dernière dans la deuxième partie de cet exposé. Revenons à présent sur la dyarchie.

Vu que les indications sur l’application du principe de la dyarchie, même si elles ne manquent pas, sont néanmoins assez réduites, nous analyserons cette théorie en tant que discours idéologique. Avant de montrer quelques uns des textes où elle apparaît, il convient de souligner qu’en tant qu’idéologie, elle a préparé le terrain pour un autre courant de pensée, celui de la monarchie sacerdotale qui se matérialisera, elle, dans une institution : celle de la royauté sacerdotale ou peut-être du sacerdoce royal des Maccabées.

A présent, quels sont les documents qu’on peut invoquer pour illustrer l’idéologie « dyarchique » ? Ce sont à la fois des textes bibliques et non-bibliques. (Entre parenthèses on peut se demander si une telle distinction est méthodologiquement parlante étant donné l’état d’inachèvement du canon à l’époque perse et hellénistique.) Parmi les textes bibliques, on peut citer certains passages dans les livres de Zacharie, Aggée, 2 Chroniques.

Dans la vision de Zaharie décrite au chapitre 4 de son livre on peut lire :

L’ange qui me parlait revint et me réveilla comme un homme qui est tiré de son sommeil. Et il me dit : « Que vois-tu? » Je répondis : « Je regarde, et voici : il y a une menorah tout en or, avec un réservoir à son sommet ; et sept lampes tout en haut, sept becs pour les lampes qui sont à son sommet. Près de lui sont deux oliviers, l’un à la droite du réservoir, l’autre à sa gauche. » Prenant la parole, je dis à l’ange qui me parlait : « Que signifient ces choses, mon Seigneur ? » […] Je pris alors la parole et lui dis : « Que signifient ces deux oliviers, à droite de la menorah et à sa gauche ? » Il me répondit : « Ne sais-tu pas ce que signifient ces choses ? » Je dis : « Non, mon Seigneur. » Il dit : « Ce sont les deux désignés pour l’huile qui se tiennent devant le Seigneur de toute la terre. » (Za 4.1-4, 11-14)

Dans un contexte hautement significatif, où Dieu transmet sa volonté de reconstruction du Temple, on constate que, contrairement à la vieille tradition orientale, qui réserve au pouvoir civil, royal, la fonction de bâtisseur, celle-ci sera partagée par le Grand prêtre Josué, fils de Yehosadaq, et le gouverneur descendant de David, Zorobabel, fils de Shéaltiel :

La deuxième année du roi Darius, le sixième mois, le premier jour du mois, la parole de YHWH fut adressée par le ministère du prophète Aggée à Zéroubavel, fils de Shéaltiel, gouverneur de Juda, et à Josué, fils de Yéhosadaq, le grand prêtre, en ces termes […] (Ag 1.1)

Enfin, un autre passage, du livre des Chroniques, fait passer le même message :

Voici! Le grand prêtre Amaryahou sera au-dessus de vous pour toutes les affaires du SEIGNEUR, et le chef de la maison de Juda, Zevadyahou, fils de Yishmaël, pour toutes les affaires relevant du roi ; les lévites seront devant vous comme scribes. Ayez du courage et agissez ! Et que YHWH soit avec celui qui fera le bien ! (2 Ch 19.11)

Parmi les textes non-bibliques véhiculant le principe dyarchique je vais citer un seul, un passage de l’Ecrit de Damas, découvert à Qoumrân. Ce passage, à connotation eschatologique, utilise la Bible, la commente et nous pouvons ainsi avoir un aperçu sur ce que peut représenter l’exégèse politique de la Bible à la fin de l’époque hellénistique. Il s’agit ici d’une exégèse de Nombres 24.17 :

Et l’Etoile, c’est le Chercheur de la Loi, qui est venu à Damas, ainsi qu’il est écrit : Une étoile a fait route de Jacob et un sceptre s’est levé d’Israël (Nb 24.17) Le sceptre c’est le Prince de toute la Congrégation (nasi), et, lors de son avènement, il abattra tous les fils de Seth. (Ecrit de Damas vii.18-21)

Une des hypothèses sur l’origine de la communauté qoumrânienne est justement celle d’un refus du « blasphème » hasmonéen qui consiste à avoir usurpé la fonction de Grand prêtre. Nous arrivons ainsi à l’une des questions qui taraude l’historien de l’antiquité hébraïque, à savoir l’innovation que représente à première vue, le cumul de l’office sacerdotal et de la fonction royale par Simon Maccabée et ultérieurement, par sa dynastie.

Avant même l’installation de la dynastie hasmonéenne, plusieurs données convergent vers l’idée que le Grand prêtre détenait l’autorité suprême sur la nation juive. On peut penser à la correspondance entre les représentants de la colonie juive d’Eléphantine avec l’administration perse dans laquelle mention est faite de la plainte déposée auprès du Grand prêtre de Jérusalem. Ces documents datent de la fin du V^e siècle av. n. è., en pleine période perse. Un document assez difficilement datable mais que la plupart des chercheurs situent vers la fin du IV^e siècle av. n. è., à savoir Hécatée d’Abdère cité par Diodore de Sicile, décrit la constitution politique des Juifs de la manière suivante[2] :

Les Judéens n’ont jamais eu de roi et l’autorité suprême revient à celui parmi les prêtres qui jouit de la meilleure réputation en termes de sagesse et de vertu. Ils appellent cet homme Grand prêtre et le considèrent le messager de Dieu par qui ils reçoivent ses commandements. (Bibliotheca historica XL, 3, 5).

Bien sûr, l’authenticité de ce passage n’est pas fermement établie : elle peut être simplement le miroir du regard ethnographique grec ; mais il n’empêche que la corroboration des données peut donner raison à Goodblatt[3] qui voit ici l’expression d’une idée ayant une large diffusion parmi les Juifs de l’époque.

Les débuts de la période hellénistique sont très mal documentés pour la région qui nous concerne. Mais quelques siècles plus tard, le livre des Maccabées décrit le même type d’autorité : quand l’envoyé du roi séleucide, Héliodore, vient inspecter la province et Jérusalem, il est reçu par le Grand prêtre (2 M 3.9).

Cela laisse penser que lorsque l’office de Grand prêtre passe de la lignée de Sadoq à la lignée des Hasmonéens, la constitution ne change pas fondamentalement. Par ailleurs, l’adoption du titre de « roi » attendra soit Alexandre Janée soit Judas Aristobule, quelques cinquante ans après l’installation de Simon comme Grand prêtre, ethnarque et chef de l’armée.

Nous ne savons pas quelle légitimation textuelle ont invoqué les Hasmonéens pour établir leur pouvoir. Il se peut, comme le pense Goodblatt, que le modèle mis en exergue soit celui du Melkisedéq de Gn 14.18 : « roi de Salem, prêtre du Dieu Très-Haut ». La même appellation figure dans une citation faite par Flavius Josèphe d’une lettre d’Auguste adressée à « Hyrcan (II) le prêtre du Dieu Très-Haut » (Antiquités Juives XVI.162-165).

Mais il est certain que l’idée d’une « théocratie » est encore vivace au tournant de notre ère, en pleine époque romaine. C’est l’apologie qu’en fait Flavius Josèphe :

Certains peuples on accordé le pouvoir suprême aux monarchies, d’autres aux oligarchies, et d’autres encore aux masses. Notre législateur n’a été attiré par aucune de ces formes de pouvoir et il a donné à sa constitution la forme de ce qui peut être appelé la « théocratie », en plaçant la souveraineté et l’autorité entre les mains de Dieu. (Contre Apion II, 16.164-165).

Pourrait-il y avoir une meilleure et plus équitable politeia que celle qui place Dieu à la tête de l’univers et qui attribue l’administration de ses plus hautes affaires aux prêtres et accorde au Grand prêtre la direction des autres prêtres ? » (Contre Apion II, 21.184).

Il résulte de ce bref exposé que l’idéologie royale, si présente dans les écrits pré-exiliques, subit des modifications importantes pendant l’époque perse et hellénistique. La théorie politique juive prévoit désormais un partage entre les domaines réservés du roi et du prêtre, ce qui aboutira, vers le II^e siècle av. n. è., au cumul, par une seule personne, des deux types de prérogatives. Il n’est pas aisé de juger dans quelle mesure le programme politique biblique a exercé son influence : le royalisme ne cesse pas mais reçoit des connotations eschatologiques. Les textes d’époque hellénistique, comme les écrits de Qoumrân et les livres des Maccabées, sont truffés d’allusions et de citations bibliques mais dans quel sens peut-on parler de modèle dans ce cas ? On n’assiste pas à une reprise de fond d’une doctrine mais plutôt à une légitimation par le texte biblique d’un renouveau doctrinal : nous avons vu cela dans l’exemple de l’Ecrit de Damas.

Cette observation nous amène tout naturellement à la deuxième partie de notre exposé, dans laquelle sera abordée la théorie politique des débuts du judaïsme rabbinique, ce qui correspond grosso modo au deux premiers siècles de notre ère.

3. Les « trois couronnes »

L’emploi du mot « théorie » est justifié ici non seulement dans la perspective du chercheur mais également dans la perspective de ceux qui ont produit les textes. Nous avons précédemment employé les mots « monarchie » et « dyarchie », mais ceux-ci ne figurent pas comme tels dans nos sources. Par contre, ce qui représente la théorie constitutionnelle rabbinique est attestée en hébreu sous son propre intitulé : « les trois couronnes », shloshah ketarim. Comme l’explique Stuart A. Cohen[4], la doctrine des « trois couronnes » consiste à considérer que le domaine de l’autorité publique est divisé en trois : le domaine de la torah, le domaine de la kehunah (prêtrise) et le domaine de la malkut (royauté). Le premier, keter torah, est le moyen par lequel la loi mosaïque est interprétée et perpétuée ; le deuxième, keter kehunah, est celui par lequel le contact est maintenu entre Dieu et son peuple ; enfin le troisième, keter malkut, désigne le système par lequel sont réglementés les rapports entre les membres de la société, en accord avec les stipulations de la constitution divine. Cohen précise que la distinction entre les trois domaines

« ne tient pas à leur fonction mais à leur centre d’intérêt. Ils ne se distinguent pas par le fait qu’ils répondent à des besoins spécifiques mais par la perspective propre que chaque domaine introduit en ce qui concerne la conduite humaine. Chaque domaine agit comme un prisme différent pour déterminer la pertinence du comportement politique. A ce titre, chacun est autorisé à exercer un contrôle constitutionnel sur les deux autres »[5].

A cette caractéristique s’ajoutent deux autres : dans la reconstruction rabbinique, l’institution des trois « couronnes » est chacune liée à un événement distinct où une alliance est conclue entre Dieu et Israël – le don de la torah sur le Mont Sinaï, l’alliance avec Pinhas, l’alliance avec les descendants de David[6]. Cela confirme d’une part, leur relative autonomie et, d’autre part, dénote le caractère durable, « éternel », de cette configuration tripartite.

A l’époque de la Mishna et du Talmud, l’équilibre entre ces trois domaines de l’autorité publique n’existait pas : la keter kehunah avait été fortement mise à mal par la destruction du 2^e temple, tandis que la keter torah et la keter malkut se restructurent et se disputent la primauté. Le nouveau locus du pouvoir communautaire est l’académie rabbinique, le beit midrash ou la yeshivah. Progressivement la classe des Sages vont faire de la keter torah une « couronne » supérieure au deux autres : elle va incorporer la keter kehunah (l’étude est désormais vu comme l’équivalent du rituel du temple) et voudra exercer son contrôle sur la keter malkut.

La plus ancienne formulation de cette doctrine figure dans le traité michnique Avot 4.13 et le propos est attribué à Simon bar Yohaï :

Il existe trois couronnes : la couronne de la torah, la couronne de la prêtrise et la couronne de la royauté ; mais la couronne de la bonne réputation les dépasse toutes les trois.

Cela peut paraître inattendu mais le symbole de la couronne n’est pas un symbole fort dans la Bible : le pouvoir y est symbolisé surtout par le rite de l’onction ou par le manteau. En hébreu biblique c’est uniquement dans le livre d’Esther que le mot keter est attesté. A l’époque hellénistique, les rois hasmonéens ont adopté certaines regalia du monde grec mais l’innovation linguistique de la Michna n’est pas moins parlante. En utilisant le terme de « couronne », Simon bar Yohaï non seulement accrédite en hébreu un mot rarement utilisé auparavant mais surtout transpose à la torah et à la prêtrise un imaginaire lié précédemment à l’exercice du pouvoir civil.

Pour résumer la spécificité de cette doctrine, on peut mentionner deux de ses traits caractéristiques. D’abord, l’autonomie de chaque « couronne », légitimée pour chacune, par une « alliance » fondatrice avec la divinité. Chacune a une légitimité et une juridiction propre car chacune représente d’une façon particulière la volonté divine. Les reconstructions rabbiniques confèrent à chaque couronne un corps de représentants propres et des procédures de transmission et de succession spécifiques. On apprend par exemple que seulement les prêtres peuvent exercer le service sacerdotal et seulement le Grand prêtre peut accéder au Saint des Saints ; que seulement celui qui détient la suprématie dans le cadre de la couronne de la royauté peut exercer des pouvoirs civils et de même, que seulement les hakhamim (les Sages) peuvent accréditer la validité des interprétations humaines de la volonté divine.

La légitimation de cette autonomie provient, comme nous l’avons déjà mentionné, de la conclusion d’une alliance spécifique : l’alliance avec Moïse pour le don de la torah, l’alliance avec Aaron pour le don de la prêtrise et l’alliance avec David pour le don de la royauté.

Par contre, l’autonomie est contre-balancée par l’idée de l’organicité du système. En théorie, la politeia juive ne peut exister en dehors du fonctionnement simultané des trois couronnes car elles représentent les trois piliers du judaïsme : la torah, le service au Temple (avodah) et le comportement civil approprié (gemilut hasadim) (Avot 1.1).

Mais comment cette théorie se matérialise-t-elle en pratique ? Les porteurs de cette théorie comme les porteurs du judaïsme normatif en général, sont les pharisiens, représentants laïcs qui mettent l’accent sur la notion d’interprétation de la torah. La révélation comme interprétation est la grande innovation, à mes yeux, du judaïsme rabbinique. Cette conception devait se créer aussi un appui social et politique : dans le cadre de la théorie constitutionnelle que nous venons de présenter, la création de la couronne de la torah répond à ce besoin. D’autre part, malgré les affirmations programmatiques d’interdépendance et d’organicité, les rabbins vont en réalité argumenter en faveur de la supériorité de leur propre domaine d’autorité.

Lisons, à titre d’exemple, un midrach du Sifré sur Nombres, pisqa 119.

Il est dit : il existe trois couronnes – la couronne de la torah, la couronne de la prêtrise et la couronne de la royauté. Aaron méritait la couronne de la prêtrise et la prit ; David méritait la couronne de la royauté et la prit. Mais voici, la couronne de la torah n’était pas attribuée. C’est pour ne pas fournir une excuse au gens qui pourraient dire : « Si la couronne de la prêtrise et celle de la royauté étaient encore disponibles, je les aurais méritées et je les aurais prises. » Voilà, la couronne de la torah est une admonition pour chacun. Car tous ceux qui la méritent sont considérés par Dieu comme méritant les trois. Et réciproquement, celui qui ne l’a mérite pas, même si les trois couronnes avaient encore été disponibles, il les aurait manquées. Et si tu demandes « La quelle est la plus grande ? » Rabbi Simon ben Elazar avait l’habitude de dire : « Qui est le plus grand, celui qui nomme le dirigeant ou celui qui dirige ? Certainement le premier. » […] Toute la force des autres couronnes dérive uniquement de la couronne de la torah, comme il est écrit : Par moi règnent les rois et les nobles décrètent le droit ; par moi gouvernent les princes et les grands, les juges légitimes (Pr 8.15-16).

Ce passage dénote non seulement la hiérarchie des trois couronnes et la supériorité des détenteurs de la couronne de la torah, mais laisse aussi entrevoir aussi la justification par laquelle les rabbins se donnent la possibilité d’accéder aux fonctions des autres couronnes. Cela est surtout manifeste dans l’établissement de ce qu’on appelle généralement une monarchie laïque, à savoir le régime du patriarcat. En Terre d’Israël, à partir d’une date encore incertaine, probablement avec Gamaliel II, au milieu du II e siècle de notre ère, le patriarche devient le chef et représentant de la nation juive. Plus intéressant encore, il fait appel à des éléments d’idéologie royale : son titre en hébreu est celui de nasi, il se réclame de descendance davidique et applique le principe dynastique.

Ce tableau, quoique sommaire, donne une idée de la pensée politique au moment de l’élaboration du judaïsme normatif. Et pour revenir au sujet de ce colloque : où est la Bible dans tout ça ? Sur quel plan exerce-t-elle son influence ? L’historien peut trouver des antécédents bibliques de la doctrine du partage (Dt 17-18), ou de la notion d’alliance – c’est une tradition qui perdure. Mais en même temps, l’agencement des trois couronnes représente une nouveauté, ce n’est pas une doctrine biblique. Le même rapport ambigu subsiste lorsque le texte biblique est utilisé dans l’exégèse qui légitime cette nouveauté. C’est une technique typique du judaïsme rabbinique, du midrash comme procédé herméneutique à la fois textuel et doctrinal. On peut s’apercevoir que la Bible est un modèle dans le sens d’une tradition assumée et d’un appui textuel ; mais, à cette époque, le fond (le royalisme ou le dyarchie) de la doctrine biblique du pouvoir n’est pas repris.

Comment peut-on conclure cet essai sur les différentes façons dont le concept de « modèle » s’applique à la Bible et à l’antiquité hébraïque ? Il nous semble que la question peut être reformulée en se référant à la notion de canon, qui est intrinsèque à la Bible. Comment un canon influence-t-il les formes de pensées, l’évolution historique ? Et dans ce cadre, une dimension spéciale à prendre en considération est la « textualité », car la Bible est un texte écrit, il est lu, du moins dans le judaïsme. Quelles sont les limites de la contrainte canonique ? Le judaïsme rabbinique l’affirme clairement, ces limites sont très larges : c’est plus l’aspect adaptation et interprétation qu’ils entendent exploiter, tout en clamant le respect de la lettre. Le domaine politique est peut-être celui dans lequel le judaïsme a été le plus obligé d’innover et de s’adapter.

Bibliographie

Ecrit de Damas, éd. André Dupont-Sommer, Ecrits intertestamentaires, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1987.

Leçons des pères du monde : Pirqé Avot et Avot de Rabbi Nathan : Version A et B, texte intégral ; trad. de l’hébreu par Eric Smilévitch, Paris, Lagrasse, Verdier, 1983.

Sifré Nombres, éd. S. H. Horovitz, Lepizig, 1917.

Hécatée d’Abdère, Aegyptiaca chez Diodore de Sicile, Bibliotheca historica XL, 3, éd. Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism, Jerusalem, The Israel academy of sciences and humanities, 1976-1984, vol. 1, Texte 11, pp. 26-29.

Flavius Josèphe, Contre Apion, éd. Théodore Reinach, trad. Léon Blum, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1930.

Flavius Josèphe, Antiquités Juives, éd. sous la dir. de Théodore Reinach, Paris, E. Leroux, 1900-1932.

Goodblatt David, The Monarchic Principle. Studies in Jewish Self-government in Antiquity, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1994.

Cohen Stuart A., The Three Crowns. Structures of communal politics in early rabbinic Jewry, Cambridge, 1990.

Cohen Stuart A., « The Bible and Intra-Jewish Politics: Early Rabbinic Portraits of King David », Jewish Political Studies Review, 3, 1-2, 1991, pp. 49-65.

Elazar D. J., Cohen S. A., The Jewish Polity: Jewish Political Organization from Biblical Times to the Present, Bloomington, 1985.

Schmidt Francis, « Figures du Roi et du grand prêtre dans la Bible et le judaïsme ancien », Cahiers du Judaïsme, 20, 2006, pp. 81-93.

Vartejanu Madalina, « Quelques remarques sur les modèles de transition politique dans l’Israël antique », Annals of the Sergiu Al-George Institute for Oriental Studies, Bucarest, IV-V, 1995-1996 (1999), pp. 15-29.

Ionuţ Daniel Băncilă

Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany

Some Aspects of Manichaeism as Religion of Beauty

Abstract: The study investigates the aspects of Beauty in Manichaean teachings, following certain intuitions by Henry Corbin and Ilya Gershevitch. The Living Soul imprisoned in this material word, the Manichaean dissemination of the Zoroastrian figure of the Virgin of the Good Deeds, as well as the descriptions of the otherworldly ”Gardens of Light” offer as many instances and occasions for the Manichaeans to praise Beauty, although always as situated above and out of this world.

Keywords: Manichaeism; Beauty; Living Soul; Daēnā; Realm of Light.

A lot has been said about Manichaeism as bearing on a pessimistic Worldview, as a so-called “Gnostic Religion”, a vision that might have had its influence on the nowadays meaning of the word itself[1]. Rather provocative in a study published in Cahiers de l’Herne, Henry Corbin (1903-1978) has challenged this view, speaking on Manichaeism as a “Religion of Beauty”. Indeed, one may ask what was the Manichaean approach to the World and how did they understood the situation of one’s being in the world? Wouldn’t our preconception on the “Gnostic”-shaped Manichaeism darken a proper understanding of the Manichaean believers mere (religious) way of life? Could a Manichaean have an eye for Beauty at all?

The following analysis is trying to adduce some evidence on how could a Manichaean have felt about (created and uncreated) Beauty. Historical reference on the huge area where Manichaeism was religiously disseminated, as well as the complicated problems of the origins of the Manichaeism (even after the discovery of the Greek Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis) were left outside the concern of this paper.

Citing Abū Sakūr Sālimi’s (11^th century) description of the Manicheans still living in the regions of China, Khotan and Tibet with their profound respect for all things that may be called beautiful, as epiphanies of the Divine Light, Henry Corbin continues:

“La Beauté est la lumière qui transfigure les êtres et les choses, sans s’y incorporer ni s’y incarner; elle est en eux á la façon de l’image irradiante, miroir qui est le lieu de son apparition. C’est pourquoi l’adoration de la Beauté est celle de la Lumière manifestée à travers le voile de chair périssable, sans être jamais un attribut inhérent à la matière ni une qualification de la chair ou de la matière. La Beauté est d’essence spirituelle; le phénomène de la Beauté est une apparition suprasensible”[2].

The Manichaean drama of Light is thus the drama of the Divine Beauty and of the Divine itself: following a special pattern (Ugo Bianchi’s so-called “principle of the homology of Light”[3]) which differs from the devolutionist scheme used in the Gnostic writings, the Manichaean “Prologue in Heavens” while starting from clearly defined “dualistic” premises develops the stages of a tightened combat to win back the divine essence which is entrapped in the matter in under the form of Light Particles. As expressed by Henri-Charles Puech, “partout et toujours il s’agira de la même substance lumineuse à sauver et se sauvant elle-même, de Dieu tout ensemble Sauveur et Sauvé”[4]. The best way to render the role and the position of the Cosmos in the Manichaean system would thus be through the image of a gigantic “alchemical apparatus” in which the “alchemical fusion and distillation processes”[5] activates the soteriological power hidden in the act of world-creation, itself the very “trick” of the Divine Light. This aspect of the Cosmology would account for the deep sense of the material existence in the common life of the Manichaean believer as well as his alleged meaning of Beauty.

But before acquiring the eschatological fulfillment of this cosmic work, the sad reality of the Divine Light-Beauty still trapped in the world is left: the Living Self. To name this reality Manichaeans used the symbol of the Jesus Passion, himself a still central concept in the whole Manichaean theological system. The designation Jesus patibillis appears most of the time in Christian polemic texts and it is used to express the suffering of the Divine Light-Beauty “crucified in the world”[6]. This suffering takes many forms, as seen in a Middle-Persian Manichaean text, edited by W. Sundermann[7], remindes one of some older Zoroastrian concepts. Although recognized as “noble”, the Living Self is still “bounded”, “enslaved” and “poor”[8]. The Meal Rituals performed by the Manichaean Electi were focused on releasing the Particles of Light from the material creation. Thus, the whole (religious) existence and ethos came to develop this idea.

The basic concept of the Manichaean ethos was that of “mixture” (gumēzišn, gumēzagih, for the Middle-Iranian Manichaean) as the second state of the whole history of Man, Light and Divine Substance itself, this “mixture” motivating the daily spiritual struggle of every Manichaean believer as depicted through the formulas for the ritual Confession of Sins: “the Manichaean life was a dynamic process of noticing and identifying aspects of the complex, mixed self as part of one nature or the other (i. e. as part of the Light or Darkness). Knowledge of the self is derived from moral and ritual practice, and learned in the process of sin and repentance”[9]. This striving to spiritual fight and attention gives us some hints on the Manichaean Spirituality, which may have been the reason why the young truth-seeker Augustine have joined the sect[10].

Beauty gave the proper name not only to the Light-Particles scattered in the material world, but also to the very core of the Manichaean religious and ritual Spirituality: the alms-gifts, for the Ritual Meal “considered as an essential part of their salvational practice”[11]. At least a Bactrian designation of this ritual (the phrase ’wdyh ’lwg nyśt qyrd w(ß), as found by I. Gershevitch) gives us a clue “about the overriding role played by Beauty, with capital B, in the redemption of Man and indeed the World”[12]. Here the hapax legomenon w(ß) is the Middle Bactrian rendering of Old-Persian vafuś (from the Sanskrit vapuş) which had the meaning “beautiful shape”[13]. Moreover, there was suggested that the term ruwānagān, used to denote the Manichaean Food Ritual, might have had a broader meaning, including “other acts of piety … although the extant quotations do not explicitly refer to them”[14]. This “soul-work” (ruwānagān) was as “soul-meal” (üzüt ašï) translated in the Manichaean Uighur text TM 276 (v. 76) edited by Annemarie von Gabain and Willi Bang in 1929[15].

“Acting for your own soul” (and therefore for the Living Soul of the World[16]), was also understood as acting for the beauty of one’s spiritual self. The Manichaean conception(s) of the soul is still very complicate. In a Sogdian Turfan Fragment edited and translated by Werner Sundermann we can find the Beauty as designation of the fourth division of one’s spiritual self (ruvān), a structure paralleled by the body’s constitution:

“der Seele ist vergleichbar dem Leib, der in fünf Glieder geteilt ist, einem Kopf, zwei Arme, und zwei Füße. Auch die Seele ist ganz ebenso. Als das erste Gleid der Seele wird das Leben angesehen, als das zweite Gleid wird die Kraft angesehen, als das dritte Gleid wird das Licht angesehen, als das vierte Gleid wird die Schönheit angesehen, als das fünfte Gleid wird der Wohlgeruch angesehen ”[17].

Here, as Philippe Gignoux noticed, the five parts of the Soul are just a spiritual reflection of the five human senses[18]. The same list appears as the designation of another part of the Manichaean spiritual self, the gyān, in a Middle-Persian text, which may hint toward a certain lack of distinction between the two terms[19], with the Middle-Persian renderings paralleling those in Sogdian.

Therefore, the Beauty for the Manichaean believer was not to be located in the material life but only in its spiritual counterpart and in the good and pious action. This is clearly stated in another Middle-Iranian Text, edited and translated by Henning:

“denn in diesem Geburt-Tod[20] gibt es ja nichts Schönes außer allein den Verdienst und den frommen Taten, die die wissenden Menschen tun”[21] .

The good things done during one’s existence, these are the true Beauty for the Manichaean. In a very fragmented Sogdian text we read about the experience one has, when dying: the encounter with 80[22] “girl angels” leading the way to Paradise. Together with these he will see his own acts in the shape of a beautiful virgin/girl:

“and his own action, as a wondrous, divine princess, a virgin, will come before his face, immortal … on her head a flowery …, she herself will set him on his way to Paradise …”[23]

This would be “the clearest expression of the Manichean teaching of the Virgin of the Good Deeds”[24], an idea borrowed from the Zoroastrianism[25] and eventually used by Mani himself in its much more literal meaning, as seen in the partially extant “Book of Giants”[26]. The Coptic-speaking Manicheans of Egypt used this image too. However, in the Coptic documents the Maiden of Light (i. e. the third member of the Manichaean Trinity[27]), the Light Form, the Beings that are leading the soul in Paradise and the Virgin of the Good Deeds seem to have contaminated each other, although there is not a definite distinction between the last three figures[28]. Curiously enough, the an-Nadim Arabic account on the Manichaean beliefs[29] seems to be very close to the Coptic sources[30]. In the Uighur texts too there can be similar images found[31]. Thus, the Manichaean conception regarding the soul’s “last journey” must have much more in common with the Iranian themes than it had been admitted before[32].

The Pahlavi texts on the Daēnā (i. e. the Virgin of the Good Deeds) offer us a glimpse on what the Beauty ideal in the Iranian world was: “brilliant, with superior body, white arms, strong, plump, that is young and tall, with prominent breast, delicate skin, noble that is generous, with royal lineage, that is she was descendent from gods, her body so beautiful and the most lovable of all creatures, her appearance most fitting”[33]. Further Persian literature of the Islamic period uses the same Daēnā image to describe the most beautiful girl’s appearance. Al-Tha’ālibī accounts:

“the best is that girl in the age between childhood and adulthood, not too big, not too small, not too thin, not too fat, well-built, with a beautiful face, beautiful in all aspects, with an even forehead, with arched brows, almond-shaped eyes, well-proportioned nose. Her lips thin and red like rubies, her mouth small and her teeth like pearls, with a gracious smile, rounded chin, a round and elegant neck, rosy cheeks, silken skin, jet black hair, breasts round like apples, wasp-waisted, with a well-formed belly, a navel formed as an ointment jar, large buttocks, small feet, well scented, of gentle voice, of few words, shy”[34].

The Daēnā motif found its way in the explicitly eschatological theme of the Qur’anic houris of the Paradise[35] and in some accounts of the Muhammad’s celestial ascension[36]. It seems that the Sufi mystic al-Hallaj, when asked were his good mood was coming from, although chained and waiting for his death, was reffering to the same Daēnā-Beauty, as his answer was: „this is the coquettery of Beauty, which draws its elect to meet it“[37]. It was also said that Oscar Wilde himself must have reworked the same pattern in one of his greatest novel[38].

The Manichaean soul cannot feed its thirst for Beauty in the material world, as this lesser-degree “beauty“ has only a perishable form, as depicted in a poetic Parthian text attributed to the Manichaean missionary Mār Ammō:

„Come yet nearer and not be fond of

this beauty that perishes in all (its) varieties

And it falls and melts as snow in the sunshine

And there is no abiding for any fair form

And it withers and fades as a borken rose

Has wist the sun, whose grace is destroyed“[39].

The true Beauty can be found only in the Realm of Light, Light which is itself Beauty (as stated early in the Avestan sources[40]). As abiding in the Light-Realm, all the Prophets of the True Religion (i. e. Manichaeism) have “a beautiful form, like the bright Sun God“[41]. Mani’s “beautiful appearance, wich is insatiable of admiring“ is also praised in an Uighur poem[42]. A Middle-Iranian text accounts the miraculos conversion of a King (Mihršāh, probably the brother of Shapur) after Mani gave him a short insight of the Gardens of Light:

“further a brother of Shapur, the King of Kings, became the lord of Mešun, and his name was Mihršāh. And on the religion of the apostle he was a fierce enemy. He had arranged a garden, good, fine and very spacious, to which none is equal […] Then to the Apostle he said: ’In the Paradise, which you praise, is there such a garden as this garden of mine?’ Then the Apostle knew (understood) this unbelieving thought. Then by (his) miraculous power [pd wrc in Ort’stranscribed text] he showed the Paradise of Light with all Gods, Dieties and the immortal Spirit of Life and garden(s) of every kind and other fine aspects which there are. Then he fell unconscious for (up to) three hours. And what he saw in (his) heart the memory has kept. Then, the Apostle put (his) hand on (his) head. He recovered consciousness. When he had risen, he fell at the feet of the Apostle, he seized (his) right hand […]“[43].

That this text resembles a classical “out of this world“ (i. e. shamanistic) experience was rightly noticed, probably pointing to the “shamanistic“ conflict between the chief Zoroastrian priest Kartīr and Mani[44], but for us what matters is the deep familiarity of Mani with the Realm of Light he preached. A fragment of the Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis seems to bring the same type of experience this time mediated by the Mani’s Spiritual Double (syzygos):

“da also hob mich der allerseligste und strahlende (Syzygos) in die Luft und brachte mich zu unsäglichen Orten, die man in den bewohnten Orten nicht kennt, in denen wir leben. Er zeigte mir alles was es dort gibt. Ich sah überhohe Berge und schöne Gärten [?] in der Nachbarschaft höchst liebliecher Flüsse und süßer Gewäser [?] … welche fremd und denen ungleich sind, die es hier in diesen Länder gibt“[45].

The Light-landscapes[46] very much cognate to the Sufi xwarenah-landscapes described by Henry Corbin[47] and not foreign to the ealy Zoroastrian other-wordly religious cartography[48] testifies for the importance of (such) pictures for the Manichaean Mind (νούς) and Thought[49] and maybe for Mani’s fame as artist painter.

The above proved Manichaean concern with the Beauty in this world or in the world to come, makes us comprehend Gershevitch’s challenging idea that Mani’s Dualism was a mere optical based Dualism[50], centered thus on the oposition of Light to Drakeness, of Ugliness to Beauty. Opticaly too, in the image of the Daēna, Manichaean Estetics is to be linked with the Ethics.

Alin Suciu

Faculty of Theology, Laval University, Canada

Mysticism and Theosis in pre-Plotinian times?

With Special Reference to the Ascent of the Soul

Abstract: The paper explores several ancient (Platonic, Jewish and Christian) testimonies regarding the human possibility of becoming a god. The topic of the ascent of the soul has received special attention in scholarly literature on mysticism. Nevertheless, a brief survey of the ancient sources raises doubt about the mystical character of the texts before Plotinus. With the exception of Origen, the ancient sources seem to be reluctant as regards the possibility of attaining deification in this life.

Keywords: Late Antiquity; Platonism; Mysticism; Philo; Clement; Origen; Plotinus.

The problem of the contemplative traditions of Late Antiquity is a complicated one, even if we have at our disposal a great variety of studies dedicated to this topic. The scholar who tries to analyse the so-called „mystical” testimonies of Platonism, Judaism, Gnosticism and other philosophical and religious movements of the ancient Mediterranean world has to face the difficult task of reconstructing a puzzle which lacks some important pieces. Unfortunately, the texts that survived in history do not offer a direct or complete picture concerning the supposed mystical techniques of their authors.

Even if the imagination of the scholars is still seduced by the classics of the past generations, their theories seem to be more and more doubtful. Thus, André-Jean Festugière[1] stated that the entire Platonic tradition encapsulated a certain contemplative practice which had its roots in Plato, and found its most refined expression in the Plotinian mysticism. In an important book, Erwin Goodenough[2] considered in his turn that Philo was primarily a mystical thinker. Regarding Judaism and its apocalyptical literature, Michael E. Stone[3] suggested that many of its narratives were fictionalized versions of the authors’ own visionary experiences. Jean Daniélou[4] was also convinced that ancient Christianity contained a secret mystical doctrine, which had originated in apostolic times, regarding celestial topographies, whose knowledge was essential for the free ascent of the soul through the planetary spheres. The Romanian scholar Ioan Petru Culianu[5] expressed the hope that one day we would discover the ritual and mystical dimensions that lie behind Gnostic texts. Although these theories still constitute important points of departure for future research, I think that they must be judged cum grano salis.

The desire to become united with the deity, the search for unio mystica, implies a conception of the divine as well as of the human person, and a certain complicated relationship between them, which is not found in all stages of religious thought. For example, early Judaism lacks such a concept of consubstantiality between the human soul and God. In a wonderful article, Arthur H. Armstrong argues that “Plotinus’s mystical experience is an isolated case among Hellenic Platonists”, even if his thinking is “undoubtedly the final product of a long and very complex metaphysical development”.[6]

The only thing about which we can be sure is that in Late Antiquity the limits between men and gods were conceived as permeable. This fact is illustrated by the vast majority of the testimonies of that period, be these Platonic, Jewish, Greek, Christian, Hermetic, or Gnostic sources. It is nonetheless difficult do decide whether the texts are describing real visionary experiences or if they are mainly literary topoi circulating freely between various philosophical and religious circles in Late Antiquity.

Some scholars have argued that a mystic doctrine is already present in Plato’s philosophy. For example, in his classical study, Andrew Louth states that:

“It could be argued that mystical theology, or perhaps better, a doctrine of contemplation, is not simply an element of Plato’s philosophy, but something that penetrates and informs his whole understanding of the world.”[7]

Maybe Louth’s statement is slightly exaggerated, but it is certain that some passages in Plato played a central role in later mystical speculations. Thus, the well-known Socratic advice from Theaetetus 176B, according to which one must “fly from this world and become like God as far as possible”, was often connected in ancient times to an interesting passage from Timaeus 90 A-D:

“We are creatures not of earth but of heaven, where the soul was first born, and our divine part attaches us by the head to heaven, like a plant by its roots, and keeps our body upright … A man who has given his heart to learning and true wisdom, and exercised that part of himself, is surely bound, if he attains truth, to have immortal and divine thoughts, and cannot fail to achieve immortality as fully as is permitted to human nature; and because he has always looked to the divine element in himself, and has kept his guardian spirit in good order, he must be happy above all men. There is of course only one way to look after anything, and that is to give it its proper food and motions. And the motions in us that are akin to the divine, and are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. We should each therefore attend to those motions, and by learning about the harmonious circuits of the universe repair the damage done at birth to the circuits in our head, and so restore understanding and what is understood to their original likeness to each other.”

This passage is also important because it shows how contemplation of the cosmos leads the soul to God, an idea that occurs very often in Christian and Platonic mysticism. As we will see, in Origen for example, the contemplation of the Creation of Father leads our nous to God. Thus, the contemplation of the cosmos is the first step of the ascent of the soul.

The first century BC Neo-pythagorean philosopher, Eudorus of Alexandria, provides an interesting interpretation of the above mentioned passage from Thaetetus. He establishes ‘likeness to God’ as the telos of human life. Eudorus’ formula, extracted from Theaetetus 176B, marks a return to Plato and the adoption of a spiritual perspective regarding the means of philosophy. In Middle Platonism, this becomes a central concern, even if its meanings are not obvious in every case. Eudorus refined the Theaetetus precept by teaching that to become like God kata to dunaton meant not “as far as possible” but “according to that part which is capable”, that is to say, it was only the nous or highest part of the soul which could become like God and flee to the other world. The irrational soul must be trained to accept the guidance of reason.

These considerations have lead Louth to say that Middle Platonism was essentially “mystical” because “it was concerned with the soul’s search for immediacy with God, a concern which was intensified with Plotinus and Neoplatonism”.[8] Or, as R. E. Witt puts it, the Platonism of the period “was characterized by its predominantly religious and theocentric world view … This age was attracted not so much by Plato the ethical teacher or political reformer, as by Plato the hierophant who (according to an old legend) had been conceived of Apollo and born of the virgin Perictione … Second-century Platonism is theological and otherworldly.”[9]

The supposed mystical character of the Platonic tradition has lead some scholars to argue that, in fact, Christian mysticism represents only an appendix of Platonic speculations regarding unio mystica and the vision of God. In an important work by A.-J. Festugière, he affirms that, “When the Fathers ‘think’ their mysticism, they platonize. There is nothing original in the edifice”.[10]

In what follows, we will try to survey briefly the various sources that were quoted by some modern authors as true mystical testimonies of Late Antiquity. After examining the fontes we will see that this idea was often inferred too easily. As we shall try to argue, the only possible competitor of Plotinian mysticism could be the Alexandrian Christian theologian Origen. In his surviving works, the ascent of the soul is described as an inward process, an enstasis or a progressive way through the noetic levels of the divine.

Jewish Apocalyptical Literature

Beginning with the fourth century BC, certain circles in Palestine had been responsible for populating the heaven with angelic orders, and asserting the participation of the elect in a new exalted life beyond the grave. These are the developments that we encounter in apocalyptic literature and the sectarian writings of Qumran.

Apocalyptic literature originated in the age of the Second Temple (Middle Judaism). In this period, the main forms of the Palestinian Judaism were the Zadokite and the Enochic. In what follows, we will focus on the Enochic type of Judaism, since this was often suspected to imply mystical elements. The name Enochic has been given to it because of the importance attached to the Biblical character Enoch, who becomes now a mediator between heaven and earth. There must be some connection between the Enochic literature and some of the writings from Qumran. For example, several fragments of 1 Enoch were discovered in the caves of Qumran.

In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the mediatory role of angels was expanded further. Enoch, Moses, and other heroes of the faith were represented as ascending to heaven to participate with the angels in the heavenly liturgy. Ezekiel and Daniel are also models for later apocalyptic writers of scenes set in the heavenly court. The mysterious figure of Enoch, who was rapt to heaven in Gen. 5:24, came to play a central role in this kind of literature. In the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36), he is portrayed as lifted up to heaven into the presence of Merkabah to mediate not only between angels and men, but also between God and his angels. At the end of time, seated on the throne of his glory, Enoch will judge both angels and men. In other texts, different patriarchs and heroes will also have thrones in heaven.

In the apocalyptic literature, it is not only the great men of the past who are assigned heavenly thrones. Enoch says that each of those who love God’s holy name “will be set on the throne of his honor” (108:12). Admitted to the heavenly court, the righteous will also be enthroned with the patriarchs and heroic figures of Israel. It is however difficult to decide if this “transmutation” to heaven represents a mystical doctrine, since the souls of the righteous have access to heaven only after physical death.

A number of eight Jewish and Christian apocalypses discuss the problem of the transformation of visionary in angel, this transformation being taken often as a transformative spiritual process by some modern authors. In chronological order, the texts are: the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36); the Testament of Levi; 2 Enoch; the Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71); the Apocalypse of Zephaniah; the Apocalypse of Abraham; the Ascension of Isaiah; and 3 Baruch.[11] Insofar as we can use the term “deification” or theosis with regard to this literature, it always expresses the assimilation of the elect to the life of the “gods” of the heavenly court. However, in these texts there is no innate divinity in the human person simply waiting to be discovered, in contradistinction with Greek philosophy, which elaborated a concept of the soul as detachable from the body in a state of ecstasy. For Jewish thought, we are nothing more than clay and dust. Moreover, as Martha Himmelfarb has shown:

“…the apocalypses are literary documents in which the depiction of the hero’s experience needs to be understood as an act of imagination, with its specifics determined by the author’s manipulation of conventions, rather than as a literary representation of the author’s own experiences.”[12]

In contradistinction with her statement, some scholars believe that they could isolate certain mystical elements in apocalyptical literature. Thus, in an important monograph, Christopher Rowland suggests that many passages in the apocalypses are based on the author’s ecstatic experiences as he contemplates particular scriptural passages, as for example in Daniel 9.[13] Elsewhere, Rowland argues that:

“It seems to be the case that we are so used of thinking the apocalyptic in terms of the imminent winding up of the present world-order and the establishment of a new age that we miss the repeated emphasis in much apocalyptical literature on the revelation of things as they actually are in the heavenly world. Hence in certain parts of apocalyptic it is not so much the description of the last stages of the historical process which is to the fore but a mystical insight into another world and the perception of its secrets.”[14]

Michael Stone has also argued that the possibility of actual visionary experience behind the apocalypses must be taken seriously[15]. He suggests that ascetic practices described in some of the apocalypses reflect the practices of actual visionaries, while the physical reactions of the heroes of the apocalypses to the awesome sights revealed to them reflect the reactions of the authors of the apocalypses to the visions they experienced.[16]

It is of course true that the eight apocalypses that we have quoted previously describe the transformation of the visionary in angels. However, there is no decisive proof that the belief concerning this “angelification” was shared by the readers that used these writings. It is true that Enoch for example suffers a process of transformation:

“And the Lord said to Michael, Take Enoch and take off his earthly garments, and anoint him with good oil, and clothe him in glorious garments. And Michael took off from me my garments and anointed me with good oil. And the appearance of the oil was more resplendent than a great light, and its richness like sweet dew, and its fragrance like myrrh, shining like a ray of the sun. And I looked at myself, and I was like one of the glorious ones, and there was no apparent difference.” (2 Enoch 9:17-19)

But when analyzing the dynamic of the text, it seems however that Enoch became an angel because it is the only way for a human being to receive divine revelations.

The only “personal” testimony in Judaism concerning human transformation in an exalted state appears in a small fragment from Qumran, edited by Morton Smith.[17] Smith has argued that the content of this little and fragmentary text indicates a human speaker, a member of the sect living around the turn of the era, rather than an ancient hero:

“[El ‘Elyon gave me a seat among] those perfect forever,

a mighty throne in the congregation of the gods.

None of the kings of the East shall sit in it

and their nobles shall not [come near it].

No Edomite shall be like me in glory.

And none shall be exalted save me, nor shall come against me.

For I have taken my seat in the [congregation] in the heavens,

and none [find fault with me].

I shall be reckoned with gods

and established in the holy congregation.”[18]

However, it would not be very careful for us to reconstruct mystical practices among the members of apocalyptical circles starting from an isolated and fragmentary text.

Philo

Philo elaborates a chain of being that bridges the gap between God and man, introducing the possibility of the ascent of the soul to God even in this life, through the practice of philosophy. As with the pagan Platonists, however, this ascent is not called deification, because man does not become a god in any real sense.

For Philo, God stands apart in an absolute transcendence. As E.R. Dodds has shown, this doctrine could be traced back to Speusippus[19], Plato’s nephew and his immediate successor as the head of the Platonic Academy. It is almost certain that Philo was not original in this regard, and a passage from Somn. (1.184) constitutes an important testimony concerning the fact that thinkers contemporary with the Jewish philosopher postulated the full transcendence of God, and, at the same time, man’s ignorance regarding his true nature: “Others again affirm that the uncreated God resembles no created being whatever, but that he is superior to everything, so that the very swiftest conception is outstripped by him, and confesses that it is very far inferior to the comprehension of him”.

In several places Philo affirms that God is apoios (LA 3.36; 1.36; 51; 3.206; Deus 55-56; Cher. 67). Our predications about him are not derived from his essence, which is beyond comprehensibility, because God does not share his essence with creatures. In his mercy, he made himself perceptible for humans only on two inferior levels: as Logos, who is God’s image[20] and constitutes the cosmos noetos, and in the creation (cosmos aisthetos), which is in its turn an image of the Logos[21]. Thus, though the essence of God remains hidden, its manifestations may be perceived.

Because God’s existence remains veiled for the human experience, even in the state of mystical vision, he is completely unknowable:

“And the Father pitied its sincere desire and eagerness to see, and gave it power, and did not grudge the acuteness of the sight thus directed a perception of himself, as far at least as a created and mortal nature could attain to such a thing, not indeed such a perception as should show him that he exists; for even this, which is better than good, and more ancient than the unit, and more simple than one, cannot possibly be contemplated by any other being; because, in fact, it is not possible for God the be comprehended by any being but himself” (Praem. 39-40).

We can hardly believe that Philo betrays any mystical features, since according to the Jewish writer the knowledge of divine reaches only the level of Logos. He is the Divine Mind, the Idea of Ideas, the first-begotten Son of the Uncreated Father, the man or shadow of God, and even the second God, the pattern of all creation and archetype of human reason. We are his sons:

“In reference to which I admire those who say, “We are all one man’s sons, we are men of peace” [Gen. 42:11], because of their well-adapted agreement; since how, I should say, could you, O excellent men, avoid being grieved at war, and delighted in peace, being the sons of one and the same father, and he is not mortal but immortal, the man of God, who being the reason of the everlasting God, is of necessity himself also immortal?” (Conf. 41).

Or again:

“For it was indispensable that the man who was consecrated to the Father of the world, should have as a paraclete, his son, the being most perfect in all virtue, to procure forgiveness of sins, and a supply of unlimited blessings” (Mos. 2.134).

Human intellect is a fragment of this divine Logos. To the uninitiated mind, God appears as a triad constituted by himself and his two potencies, the Creative and the Regent Powers, whereas to the purified mind he appears as One (cf. Abr. 119-123).

The kinship which the human soul enjoys with Logos, the emanation of the divine glory, enables the devout to attain intimacy with God. Logos makes us “friends of God”. For the just man, union with Logos makes him a “throne-partner”. “Throne-partner” is also used to express Logos’ relationship with God, implying that the righteous man who has united himself with Logos can take his place in the divine council. However, Philo says nothing about the final union with the One.

As for many other Platonic philosophers, for Philo the rational part of the soul is “a holy image of all images, the most godlike” (Fuga 69; Spec. Leg. 1.329; Opif. 137). This is the image of the Logos, “a fragment of the divine and blessed soul” (Det. 90; Opif. 146). However, according to David Runia[22], Philo reflects a lack of clarity endemic in contemporary Platonism – only with Plotinus, Runia believes, is there the question of whether the rational part is related to the divine in a model/copy or part/whole relation’ finally resolved. But there is a gulf between the human and the divine which is never fully overcome in Philo. The soul is not the same thing as God but simply “of near kin to the Ruler, since the divine spirit had flowed into him in full current” (Opif. 144). As Runia puts in, “it is not easy for him (i.e., for Philo) to give a clear indication of where God’s true divinity ends and man’s derived divinity starts”.[23]

In its turn, the doctrine of the ascent of the soul brings no decisive data regarding Philo’s mysticism. For the Jewish thinker, the ascent of the soul is quadruple: the religious, the philosophical, the ethical, and the mystical. According to the philosophical ascent (exposed especially in On the Migration of Abraham), the soul, rising from the sensible to the intelligible world will contemplate Him who Is. Through self-knowledge, the man will know God. However, the supreme being is too exalted to be reached by the powers of thought: “One would need to become a god – something which is impossible – in order to be able to apprehend God”. The ethical dimension of the human life raises the intellect to God. But this participation in God does not imply becoming God, or even a god. The separate identity of the individual is retained through becoming like God rather than being changed essentially. This philosophical ascent through analysis is of course modeled on a similar idea found in Plato.[24] Plato believed that the dialectical reason (noesis) can arrive at the intuition of a First Principle by “treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings, but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings, and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting-point of all, and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to the conclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas” (Republic, 511 BC). Cf. this with Republic 532 AB: “When anyone by dialectics attempts through discourse of reason and apart from all perceptions of sense to find his way to the very essence of each thing and does not desist till he apprehends by thought itself the nature of the good in itself, he arrives at the limit of the intelligible”. The exact nature of this upward-downward dialectical path has been much debated, but the most likely interpretation is that it involves a sudden intuition of the First Principle (cf. Symp. 210E; Ep. 7.341 CD) at the end of a series of analyses of various hypotheses, which then permits a downward series of deductions from that Principle.[25]

The mystical ascent is expressed by Philo as an encounter between the human and the divine, which is possible only out of the body – in this life in a state of ecstasy, in the next when a person has become pure nous. What does ecstasy mean here? According to Philo, an intellect possessed by divine love forgets itself utterly (Somn. 2.232). The mystic is seized with a sober intoxication like those seized with Corybantic frenzy, and the eye of understanding opens. As the well-known passage in Quaestiones in Exodum puts it:

“When the prophetic intellect becomes divinely inspired and filled with God, it becomes like the monad, not being at all mixed with any of those things associated with duality. But he who is resolved into the nature of unity is said to come near God in a kind of family relation, for having given up and left behind all mortal kinds, he is changed into the divine, so that such men become kin to God and truly divine”. (QE 2.29)

The supreme example of a man who has attained the telos and become “truly divine” is Moses. Having come into contact with “the unseen, invisible, incorporeal and archetypal essence of existing things” he became himself “a piece of work beautiful and godlike, a model for those who are willing to copy it” (Vita Moses I.158).

However, Moses is not really a god. “He is more of a mediator, and this does not imply a kind of deification in which Moses comes to share the same nature as God”[26]. Behind Philo’s characterization lies probably the Stoic application of the term theos to the sage. According to Diogenes Laertios (Lives and Doctrines 7.117 ff.), among the Stoics the wise man was theos kai basileus. In conclusion, we may say that for Philo Moses is not a god except by title or analogy.

Clement

Let us say a few words about Clement and Alexandria and his treatment of deification[27]. From the beginning, we have to keep in mind that Clement uses the Platonic precept from Theaetetus and he also knew Philo, quoting him in a few instances. Like the Jewish thinker before him, Clement sees the Forms as the thoughts of God. A man who separates himself from the corporeal world and contemplates the Forms therefore assimilates himself to God. For Clement, the Christian Gnostic becomes a god by controlling the soul’s lower faculties, for in this way he comes to resemble Christ, who is “free from passion, from anger and from desire” (Strom. 4.151.1). The likeness of God means living according to virtue and we can resemble Christ by imitating his freedom from passion. For Clement, freedom from passion, apatheia, is a divine attribute. Only Christ, as the incarnate divine Logos, is absolutely without passion (Strom. 6.9.71).

“Likeness of God”, as Philo saw it, could also refer to the biblical creation of man “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26). Usually Clement distinguishes between image and likeness, man being created in the image of God but only receiving the likeness when he has attained perfection. Thus, the Christian Gnostic is not only the son of God but also a temple of God. However, the theosis is never fully completed. It is beyond the power of human beings to imitate the transcendent First Cause. The imitation of God is only the imitation of Christ.

For Clement of Alexandria the doctrine of theosis has a purely ethical dimension. Through the attainment of the likeness of God by ascetic and philosophical endeavour, believers reproduce some of Christ’s attributes in their own lives by imitation, but a complete deification is nonetheless inconceivable for the Christian author.

Origen

For Origen, God in incorporeal (asomatos), mind, invisible (aoratos), one and simple, the good and he transcends being and mind. God is light and he argues that this light is the light “which lightens the whole understanding of those capable to receive truth”. In this respect, he quotes Psalm 35:10 (LXX) “In thy light we shall see light”. Moreover, God is spirit, and the spirit can be apprehended only intellectually. As in later Platonism, the process of knowing God is thus an intellectual process.

In an important study, Karen Jo Torjesen has shown that Origen’s De Principiis constitutes a “philosophical handbook on the interpretation of Scriptures”.[28] The philosophical doctrines of De Principiis correspond to the successive stages of spiritual insight which form Origen’s concept of the soteriological process, and which directs his exegetical procedure. The knowledge of God is attained through allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures: “But if we turn to the Lord, where also the Word of God is, and where the Holy Spirit reveals spiritual knowledge, the veil will be taken away, and we shall then with unveiled face behold in the Holy Scriptures the glory of Lord” (De Principiis I.1.2). The knowledge of God is mediated by the Son. In the first chapter of De Principiis he argues that the Son does not see the Father, but rather knows the Father, Christ being the model of human mind.

For the Christian theologian the divine and the world are hierarchically oriented, the supreme level being occupied not by the Trinity, but by the Father.[29] In Origen’s theology the process by which the soul comes to the saving knowledge of God takes place through a pattern of complementary movements in three stages. The threefold activity of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is followed by a corresponding threefold response of the soul in its journey to the knowledge of God. This pattern is present in De Principiis and runs as a leitmotif throughout his other writings. This idea forms his conception of how the Christian comes to the knowledge of God as Father. As we can easily observe, this interiorization of the ascent predates the similar idea found in the Enneads of Plotinus.

Origen believes that a well-trained mind has the ability of a direct and immediate knowledge of God[30], being capable of returning to that original society of rational souls which are engaged in an enraptured contemplation of God. In this sense, De Principiis and Commentary on the Song of Songs exhibit “the soteriological process by which the soul assimilates, or is assimilated to the knowledge mediated by Logos”.[31]

In De Principiis I.3.7-8 he identifies three levels of the contemplation: (1) the first stage of the ascent is the Holy Spirit. This constitutes a preparatory level: it purifies the soul because the Holy Spirit is the principle of holiness. While contemplating the Holy Spirit, the soul itself becomes holy. (2) At the second level, the soul receives the wisdom and knowledge of Christ. Since Christ, as Logos, is wisdom and knowledge, the soul receives wisdom and knowledge contemplating Him. (3) The third stage of this soteriological process is participation in God, the Father, in other words, the complete deification of the man.

In the light of Plotinian mystical philosophy, it is very important to note that for the Alexandrian theologian each stage of the contemplative ascent is an appropriate preparation for the next level in the ontological hierarchy. In Commentary on John XIX.6.33-8, Origen describes a similar sequence within the knowledge of the divine. The upward progression of the soul in the knowledge of God corresponds to a downward movement of revelation of the Trinity. This downward movement is prefigured in Origen’s doctrine of creation. In this, he is again very close to Plotinus. The way of the unfolding of the divine, is also the way of ascent to it.

Now, God’s incorporeality makes possible the deification of the human being. When God “finds a suitable dwelling place in the soul of a saint (i.e., the one who has been purified) he gives himself up, if I might thus speak, abiding in it” (Comm. Jn. XIII.24.143). We can probably infer from this that the saint becomes in his turn intellectualis natura simplex. Only God is a monas, henas (Oneness), while the Logos (Christ) is multiple. As Robert Berchman showed, this vision of God is a combination in the Middle Platonic fashion of two separate concepts: the Aristotelian definition of God as self-thinking thought and the Neo-Pythagorean idea of God as Monad[32].

The ascent and the deification are possible because, as Mind, God is the source of all intellectual existence, an idea which provides for a continuity of nature between God and man. In the first book of De Principiis (I.1.7) he asserts that there is a “certain affinity between the human mind and God, of whom the mind is an intellectual image”, which, when it is “purified and separated from bodily matter” is able to acquire the perception of God. He quotes in this sense from the Gospel of Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. The element which ascends is the mind which has found “a divine sense” (aesthesis theian heureseis).

In Contra Celsum VII.46, Origen describes again the stages through which we must progress in the knowledge of God, in terms of the Platonic doctrine of ascent (Symposium 210-212), a passage well-known in the Platonic tradition and quoted by Porphyry in connection with Plotinus’ own spiritual visions (see his Vita Plotini). Here, the ascent is more clearly represented, the first stage being the contemplation of the physical order:

“For the invisible thing of God, that is, the intelligible things, ‘are understood by the things that are made’ and ‘from the creation of the world are clearly seen’ [Rom. 1:20] by the process of thought. And when they have ascended from the created things of the world to the invisible things of God they do not stop there. But after exercising their minds sufficiently among them and understanding them, they ascend to the ‘eternal power’ of God, and, in a word, to his ‘divinity’ [Rom. 1:20].”

What is really striking is that Origen perceives the ascent through the mediating principle (Logos or Nous) as threefold, an idea occurring also in Plotinus. In Commentary on John XIX, Origen is commenting on John 8:19: “Jesus answered, ‘You know neither me nor my Father; if you knew me, you would know my Father also.’” Only through the Son that one comes to know God. Our contemplation of the Son as Logos brings us to the contemplation of God. Our contemplation of the Son as Wisdom brings us to know the Father of Wisdom. And our contemplation of the Son as Truth brings us “to see being, or that which transcends being, namely, the power and nature of God” (Comm. Jn. XIX.6.35-7).

I would recall here that in the philosophy of Plotinus the second principle, i.e., Nous, has three levels: Being-Life-Mind, the intelligible triad of the later Neoplatonists. In Origen’s theology we could find the triad Truth-Wisdom-Logos as characteristic of the second hypostasis, the Son. In both systems, this triad is intellectually comprehended by the mystic. Maybe we can infer from this that a mystical approach of the divine has taken already place in the work of Alexandrian theologian. However, a more elaborate and careful study of his mystical theology remains a desideratum for a future research.

Ştefan Borbély

Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Early Christianity and the Comparative Religion of Ash

Abstract: The paper investigates the anthropological roots of the symbolism of ash in the four Christian gospels, and in the early custom of the Ash Wednesday anointing ritual, as related to the archaic symbols of fire, palm tree, and the Egyptian myth of resurrection focused on the cosmological role of the Phoenix. By analyzing the ritualistic content of the old Jewish Festival of the Tents (Sukkot), whose traces appear in the Christian gospels in a few passages related to Christ’s imminent death, the paper also suggests that, in a specific anthropological context, Jesus might have been the sacrificial victim of an early harvest feast, which explains his vivid association to the ashes in the ritual of the Ash Wednesday and in the early Christian re-writings of the legends concerning the Phoenix.

Keywords: ash; Ash Wednesday; Gospels; Jewish festivals; early Christian symbols; Phoenix.

From amongst the great mythological complexes of the antiquity, ash was one of the main victims of the emerging Christianity. Beliefs like those shared by the Orphic and the Gnostics in the Mediterranean world or by the Druids in northern Europe were all related to the ritualistic resurrection through fire and ash. The Germans’ Yggdrasil, an axis mundi of the entire universe, used to be an ash tree, related to the oak, the other fire tree of the Scandinavian world. In the Celtic mythology, the dark Balor, god of the underworld and grandfather of Lug, the white god of the emerging light, used to reborn through fire and ash. From him, we got the later balaurus, the scary dragon of the Medieval world, represented as a flying serpent with raging fire in his mouth, ready to devour everyone, but also with wings, capable to fly. Our bedtime Cinderella, whose roots go back to the Gnostic stories of the third century A.C., is a beautiful ash lady, sent to a glamorous weeding by the magic of a benevolent fairy. Let also recall Phoenix, the fabulous ash bird, which used to be in ancient Egypt a cosmic shield between the Sun and the Earth, whose role was to protect the Sun from getting sick from the raising poisons emanating from the Earth. Exhausted by the difficult task, the Phoenix turned into ashes at the end of each day, in order to regain his forces in the morning.

Immortality, by the ancient Greeks, can be obtained through fire and ash, as we see in the stories related to the mourning Demeter, who tries to get revenge on the gods by transgressing a limitation, which forbids gods to turn humans into immortals. In the Orphic set of beliefs, the Titans are turned by Zeus into ashes, in order to recapture Dionysos Zagreus from the burning corpses, the ash infant. Sacrifice and fertility rites in the Antiquity are mainly constructed on the belief in the magic energies of fire and ash, as they were extensively analyzed by Frazer in The Golden Bough.

All these ancient beliefs, and other thousands related to them, are based on the association of ash with life. How come then that Christianity puts aside all these optimistic visions of resurrection and immortality, crediting ash with the only virtue of humility, nothingness and death? Already Abraham, in the Genesis, has said:

“Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” (18:27)

How come then that a belief in Christ, built on the idea of sacrifice and resurrection, allegedly repudiated the very mythological mechanism which could have helped it to easily succeed? Ash was everywhere in the ritualistic beliefs of the Mediterranean world, ready to be picked up and converted into a Christian symbol. Did the early Christians really avoid the topic, as to punish a strong ritualistic enemy which is to be turned into a negative religious concept, associated to humility and mortification?

A possible answer says that Christianity was more related to water than to fire, through baptism and purification. Christ has walked over the water. Some of his early followers, like Simeon and Andrew were fishermen. Frédérick Tristan, in his Les premières images chrétiennes[1] has thoroughly swept together all the early Christian symbols and representations found in the catacombs: many of them, like the anchor, the fish, or the ship with the moat in form of a cross associate human life to water. In Mark’s Gospel, the earliest we know, there is no major hint to fire, except the surprising passages of Chapter 9, where Christ says that in order to gain final purification ”every one will be salted with fire” (9:42)

Again, rather surprisingly, Christ, who has traveled by boat on the Sea of Galilee in the whole Gospel of Mark, walking also on the water when his boat was struggling to reach shore in spite of the hostile winds, tells his disciples, as a final conclusion: “Have salt in yourself, and be at peace with one another.” (Ibid.) A little bit earlier, he has equaled “salt” with “faith”, suggesting that it can dim through malpractice and lack of vigilance: “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it?” (Ibid.) The warning goes much beyond a simple parable, which it actually is, as Christ suggests that the Last Judgment which will precede the cosmic purification through fire will be announced by the coming of the prophet Elijah, who “does come first to restore all things”. (9:12). Afterwards he will be followed by the Son of God. But only a few lines later, Jesus obscures the riddle, by putting Elijah’s arrival into the past:

“…I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.” (9:13)

There is no other logic explanation to this chronological reversion than the desire of the author of the Gospel to link the new faith to the Hebrew Bible, by suggesting continuity, based on the belief that the Christian religion is already a post-apocalyptic reality. The association of the “fire of Hell” to “salt” confirms the logic, as it suggests that apart from the Jews, who still wait for the final cleansing, the Christians have already past through it, filling their bodies with the purifying fire.

Obviously, its force can dim due to sin and temptations, and therefore each true Christian gets the obligation of nurturing the fire within, which happens through faith and obedience to the new law. But, apart from the other believers, a Christian has the fire in himself, and must not get it from outside: Saint Augustine will say the same in his De Civitate Dei, when speaking about the difference between the worshippers of the old traditions – that is the pagans – who get the sacred from outside, through their frantic religious festivals or rituals, and the Christians, whose faith is entirely a question of personal profoundness and interiority. Therefore, Augustine suggests, earthly religions depend on a specific place (a sanctuary, a temple or a shrine), while the true Christian is “a-topos”, a person with only inner determinations.

Presumably Christianity inherited the symbolism of fire from the early Judaism, where it occurs both as a vision and a ritual of purification. The divine chariots of fire, seen by the Israelites at Mount Sinai, are the central theme of the rabbinic Merkabah vision and mysticism, analyzed by Gershom Scholem and Ira Chernus in a divergent way, as Scholem asserts that the Merkabah tradition set pace for a specific “Jewish Gnosticism” , apart from Ira Chernus, who considers

“…that Merkabah mysticism was integrated into rabbinic Judaism precisely to prevent the development of a true «Jewish Gnosticism».”[2]

Jahweh, in the story of the revelation, is related to fire: the Exodus says that when Lord gathered his chosen people lead by Moses,

“Mount Sinai was wrapped in a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly” (19:18).

Ira Chernus mentions that the Tannaitic Midrash vividly kept the tradition of the holy vision of fire, as associated to the throne of Lord. In order to get there one has to pass seven heavenly girdles, each of the having a gate with a guardian.

“When I saw him… [that is: the guardian of the first gate, says a traveler] … my hands were burned and I was standing without hands and without feet.” Furthermore „the guardians of the seventh heikal are described as having «lightning which leaps forth from their eyeballs, and balls of fire from their nostrils, and torches of hot coals from their mouths.»”[3]

When approaching the seat of God, the heat intensifies:

„The seraphim of the glory surround the throne of all four sides with walls of lightning, and the ophannim surround the throne with fiery torches.”[4]

In spite of the body mutilation suggested by the first fragment – „…my hands were burned and I was standing without hands and without feet” – the quoted visions do not speak about transfiguration: the traveler approaches the gates of Heaven, goes towards the seat of God, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he is transformed: the outer vision does not necessarily imply an inner transformation, apart from the fear of getting too close to divinity. As we all know, fear is, in Judaism, a religious feeling, as in Exodus Jahweh defines himself as a jealous and revenging God:

„…I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation o those who hate me…” (Ex. 20:5)

Nevertheless, transfiguration through fire happens in the Old Testament too, being conceived as a technique of getting rid of sin by heavenly initiation. In the Book of Isaiah (6:1-4) the protagonist has a fiery vision of God

(„In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting up a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple …And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.”)

, but steps back in panic when he realizes that he is unworthy for the mighty vision:

„And I said: «Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts».” (Is., 6:5)

At that moment, a miracle happens:

„Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: «Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.»” (Ibid.)

The ritual of purification clearly suggests that the basic state of the visionary is sin, acquired by the protagonist purely in a metaphysical way, as the true follower of Adam, the first great sinner. It also says that transfiguration – which is the final state of the cosmic „vision”, or apocalypse – has fire as a substance of transformation. So to say, the people of Israel have to “prepare” the final fire, in order to cleanse the universe – and also history, as epiphany of God – from their sins. As such, true revelation is a post-apocalyptic reality, as it will be asserted when the first Christians will set in the deep core of their faith revelations, or images, derived from the vision of an absent body and that of its secret ascension to Heaven.

We have already seen that for Jesus faith is a technique of dealing with fire, as it is written in Mark’s Gospel: by the end of the world ”every one will be salted with fire” (9:42). The words uttered by Jesus also explain the confusion with Elijah, which also appears in Mark 8:27-28, when the followers confess that Jesus could also be Elijah, as well as John the Baptist or one of the prophets. Apart from the disciples, who believe that the prophet will come in an unspoken future, “to restore all things”, Jesus suggests that he has already come in a near past:

“…I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.” (Mark, 9:13)

Talking about John the Baptist in the Gospel of Matthew (11: 7-14), Jesus identifies him with Elijah:

“…if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who has to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

As we all know, Elijah is one the main witnesses in Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark, 9:2-13), but his linkage to John the Baptist does not necessarily mean that Jesus speaks about the superposition of two persons. He rather suggests that Lord has started the apocalyptic mechanism of redemption and purification, which supposes the prior presence of the prophet, who will precede the Son in order to “restore all things”.

One of the strangest keywords in the early Christian texts is “madness”. Paul is particularly fond of it:

“the foolishness of God – he writes to the Corinthians – is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (I. Cor., 1:25)

For Paul, Christianity is nothing more than a divine, metaphysical “foolishness”, chosen by God to act out his will to purify the universe:

“For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (Ibid., 26-30)

The intentional confusion between John the Baptist and Elijah is part of this divine “foolishness”, but it also raises a few unavoidable questions. Did the Baptist’s water become a ritual substitution for the divine apocalyptic fire, which was depicted in the visions of Ezekiel and Isaiah? How come that Jesus goes through water, accepting to be baptized, and has almost nothing to do with fire, except his remark that by the end of the world everybody will be “salted with fire”? How come that the Son of a Lord who expresses himself through flames and ignition has almost nothing to do with his father’s divine epiphany, and looks for fishermen to stroll over the seas of his homeland?

It is really difficult to answer these questions, especially because the ancients did not make a clear difference between the characteristics of fire and water. Philology plays also its role in the confusion, because of the transition from the Aramaic of Jesus to the Greek of the Gospels; in between them we have the popular Greek (koiné) of the Septuaginta, which also plays a major role in the transposition.

In his seminal work Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period[5], Erwin R. Goodenough says that fire was conceived as a sort a magic liquid (purigenés) by the Greeks, as it appears in the rites of Dionysos. Divine wine, by the ancients Jews, had also been an energetic and mysterious substance of exuberance, associated to fire. It is probably time to remember that the ancient beliefs make a difference between two hypostases of fire: the first one comes from the sky, being associated with the lightning, while the second one is the nurturing fire of the underworld, which can be found in the plants, tree – generally in vegetation. As Frazer has shown it in The Golden Bough, the second type of fire is related to death and resurrection, because it follows the biannual rhythm of the seed, which “dies” by going down into the earth, in order to spring to life the coming year. It is also known that the ancient fertility rituals (the rites of Dionysos, Demeter and Cybele; the druidic rite of the mistletoe in Northern Europe; the ritual of the dying Sun in the Roman world etc.) were concentrated at the end of the yearly vegetation cycle (in Autumn of early Winter – by all means, after harvest), because they expressed the anxiety that the dying vegetation will lose its powers for ever, and it will not help the seed to resurrect the next year. Therefore, many communities used to “help” the vegetation to “survive”, by keeping seeds, branches and leaves in the temples during the winter, in order to “fix” the energy of the rich harvest, and transmit it to the next generation of vegetation.

It might be possible that early Christian communities preserved the archaic belief in resurrection through death, identifying Jesus with the dying cosmic energy of the harvest. Gradually this belief will fade, by leaving behind some old ritualistic remnants, which will go into the liturgical practice, and people will lose their original meaning. In order to illustrate the assumption, we have to analyze the Ash Wednesday ritual and the way Christianity has reconverted the old Egyptian Phoenix myth into an analogy to Christ’s resurrection. Both stories lead us to ash, and furthermore to a rather strange detail of questionable chronology, found in the Gospels.

In the Sacred Origins of Profound Things[6], Charles Panati says that Ash Wednesday, as the first day of Lent, derives from a ritualized painting with ashes, which has been for a long time a symbol for repentance.

“Early Christians approached the church altar to have the ashes of blessed palm leaves scored on their forehead in the shape of a cross.”[7]

Extensively, ash was not used only by Ash Wednesday to paint the sign of the cross of the forehead: we can assume that it was generally used along with oil, since Saint John Chrysostom says that

“each day people carry around the sign formed on their foreheads as if it were a trophy on a column. Anyone could see a whole chorus of these signs of the cross in houses, in the marketplaces, in bridal chambers.”[8]

Wednesday, when the feast of anointing with ash occurs, used to be a “Dies Mercurii”, dedicated to the God Mercur, who is the Roman correspondent of Hermes psychopompos, the Greek God of the threshold between the upper and the underworld. In association with a rather strange, teenager and less gruesome Heracles, Hermes was the god whose pillar – or xoanon – guarded in Ancient Greece the samples of the previous harvest, brought into the temple in order to preserve their energy until spring[9]. Therefore, in Themis, Jane Ellen Harrison presents a few unusual representations of Heracles, seen as a vegetation god with a cornucopia and a klados (a magic bough) in his hands[10]. The same representations occur with Apollo and Artemis[11] guarding an omphalos adorned with a mantic bird. Both deities have wreaths in their hands, in order to capture the fire emanated by the omphalos, which is, of course, not the fire of the torments and of lightning, but the nurturing fluid of the underworld. While Apollo’s bough is represented with green leaves at its top, Artemis holds a nartex (Prometheus’s secret recipient of the “green fire” transmitted to the humans), which is clearly depicted as a blazing torch.

Referring to Ash Wednesday, Charles Panati also mentions that

“The blessed palm leaves that are burned [on the altar] to make the ashes are, in fact, «leftovers» from the previous year’s Palm Sunday”[12].

According to the ritual, branches and leaves of the palm wreaths used on Palm Sunday are preserved in the church, in order to be burned on Ash Wednesday. Obviously, the custom suggested a transmission of energy, related to Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem, where he was greeted by the people with palm wreaths and songs. Therefore, Ash Wednesday used to be a fertility ritual, and not only a time for mourning, related to the nothingness of the human condition.

Erwin R. Goodenough[13] considers that „the palm tree was identified with the tree of life in early Christianity”[14], since his significance goes back to the fertility rituals governed by goddess Ishtar in Babylon, or by Isis in Egypt. As such, the cross appears to be a „tree of life” (xylon, not dendron)[15], but Goodenough also mentions the famous passage from the Deuteronomy (21:22-23), which says that a criminal hung on a tree after he had been sentenced to death „is accused by God”, and his body must be removed and buried before sunset. We may assume that the Romans who punished Jesus knew about this belief, and so did the Jews who gathered around the cross. Nevertheless, in the first decades of Christianity, those who observed the new faith reconverted the symbol of the cursed tree, turning it towards the palm tree and its ashes, which meant life through resurrection.

According to R. Van Den Broek (The Myth of the Phoenix according to Classical and Early Christian Traditions[16] Phoenix is, by name, „the purple bird of the palm tree”. The name is clearly associated to Phoenicia (Syria), where the bird flies back before dying. M.C. Astour[17] says that phoinix – which also appears in the Mycenaean Linear B as po-ni-ki-pi[18] – resembles to the equivalent of the Arabic or Hebrew term for madder, which is a red paint extracted from the roots of a plant named Rubis tinctorum. It was the color of the sunny fire encapsulated in plant in the ancient times, also associated with the Hebrew bird chôl, the flying equivalent of Phoenix.

The bird was identified, of course, with the Egyptian bennu (or benu), an epiphany of Atum, the ancient deity of Heliopolis, a bird which preceded Sun at the gates of the morning. Jean Hubaux and Maxime Leroy (Le mythe du phénix dans les littératures grecque et latine[19]) refer to a detail from Psalm 78 (27), where God is praised for feeding his people („he rained flesh upon them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas”), mentioning that in Hebrew the word chôl signifies both sand and Phoenix, as it happens in Greek, where phoinix is also a bird and the palm tree. The homonymy is also present in the Exodus (15:27), in the description of the country of Elim, where the Jews encounter a typical locus amoenus: „Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees” (translation equally good for „Phoenix”).

In the archaic mythological tradition Phoenix’s immolation by the Sun represented a male sacrifice on the top of a palm tree, apart from Ovid’s intentional misinterpretation, where the bird is female. St. Clement of Rome, at the end of the 1st century A.D., was probably the first known Christian who associated Jesus to Phoenix, speaking about a resurrected bird who takes the ashes of his father to Egypt. The association is also present in the Physiologus (2^nd century A.D.), but Mary Cletus Fitzpatrick[20] also mentions some Roman coins issued in the time of Constantine the Great, which represent the wide-winged bird Phoenix as a symbol of Aeternitas, appearing as glory above the image of the emperor who keeps in his hands the earth represented as a globe.

Lactantius’s De Ave Phoenice – Mary Cletus Fitzpatrick says – „is clearly that of a Christian, since it treats the pagan legend of the Phoenix in an entirely new religious spirit”.[21] The author probably took the legend from Saint Clement of Rome, from Plutarch and the Physiologus, presenting it to Constantine – whose son he used to teach – in a purely Christian interpretation, based of the mechanism of resurrection.[22] The story tells about a solar grove, inhabited by a fantastic bird living on the top of a solar tree near a fountain, which used to greet the rising sun with a divine song. When the bird feels that death is approaching, it flies back to its homeland in Syria, gathers aromatic plants in a nest, and turns into ashes through a fantastic ignition. The ashes are mould in a form like a seed, which gives birth to a white worm with no legs. Furthermore the worm transforms into an egg, and finally into a brilliant solar bird, which is so fascinating, that it becomes immediately a subject of popular praise and veneration.

Scholars, like R. Van Der Broek[23], insist on the symbolism of the three phases of the metamorphosis, as associated to the trinity. Apart from the direct Christian message, which makes from Phoenix’s death an analogy to the resurrection of Christ, we may also presume that some Orphic and Gnostic details slipped into plot, with the transformation of the egg into the white worm with no legs. The basic Christian symbolism – as it has been also confirmed by the Physiologus – deals with the capacity of ash to resurrect and give place to transfiguration, which is congruent to the basic symbolism of Ash Wednesday

Let’s finish with the logic of the sacred chronology we can find in the Gospels. Our customary chronology concerning Eastern was fixed at the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), when Constantine decreed that Eastern should be celebrated in the first Sunday after the first full moon which comes after the equinox. Since the Roman calendar started on the 1^st of March, spring used to be a period of rebirth at that time, following the death frenzy of February, when the whole world decomposed ritually, in order to renew itself with the coming year. (We owe to the ancient death rituals performed in February the modern timing of the Carnival, which is also a ritual of social and cosmic de-structuring, marked by skeletons, creepy bones and dead men masks walking on the streets.)

A rather intriguing detail obscures the chronology of the Gospels in their final section, which starts with Christ’s transfiguration. In Mark’s Gospel, where the transfiguration is assisted by Moses and Elijah, up on a high mountain (9:2),

“Peter said to Jesus: «Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.»”

The scene is repeated in the Gospel of Matthew (17:4) and in that of Luke (9:33), but it misses from the non-synoptic Gospel of John, who presents, instead, a tension between Jesus and his disciples concerning the sacred Feast of the Tabernacles (John, 7:7 sq.)

Arriving in Galilee by the time of the harvest festival, Jesus urges his disciples to go to the Feast of the Tabernacles (called also Sukkot) without him:

“Go to the feast yourselves; I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come. So saying, he remained in Galilee.” (John, 7:8-9)

Nevertheless, after the disciples’ departure, Jesus joins the festival, “not publicly, but in private” (Ibid., 7: 9-10) – that is hiding his real identity, just because to announce his imminent death.

In the Leviticus (23:33-43) we read that the Feast of Sukkah (plural: Sukkot) celebrates the tents – or booths – the Jews were obliged to live during the 40 years of wandering in the desert, after the exodus from Egypt. The deep significance of the festival is but related to fertility, since the tents are adorned with raisins and leaves, and the participants are celebrating the rain. In an anthropological sense, the Sukkot is a feast dedicated to the “death” (or: occultation) of nature, and to the active hope that its energies will “survive” until the next Spring. Therefore, is not at all surprisingly that Jesus chooses this moment to announce his death, although the participants do not realize that he – and no one else – will become the sacrificial victim.

If one counts the following time until Jesus’ death and resurrection in the synoptic gospels, it becomes possible to sum up four or five months which separate the harvest feast of mid October from Passover in April or May. In the early Gospel of Mark, Jesus goes to Capernaum, then crosses the Jordan, enters Jerusalem cleansing of the temple, then reaches Jericho and the Mount of Olives, in order to get to the strange episode with the fig tree, by Bethany:

“On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.” (Mark, 12:12-13)

The episode is repeated in the Gospel of Matthew (21:18-20), but in the Gospel of Luke (21: 29-30) the fig tree has no leaves, and becomes just a pretext for a parable on the strength of the faith.

If the time was really Spring in the first two Gospels (as it will certainly be in the Gospel of Luke), there would be no logic for Jesus to approach the fig tree, as he could have taken for granted that the tree does not bear fruit. Thus, by linking the feast of Sukkah as moment of death to the re-birth ritual celebrated with Passover, Jesus appears to be the delayed sacrificial victim of the harvest feast, which also explains his later vivid association to the ashes, in the ritual of the Ash Wednesday or in the Christian legend about the Phoenix.

Note

Mihaela Ursa

Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Women in the Religious Imaginary

From “the Crown of Creation” to “the Gate of Hell”

Abstract: This paper investigates the way in which, in order to be contained, unsettling projections about women inside the religious imaginary are confined to specific areas, which I call “reservation fields”, since these allow their survival, at the same time keeping them under control by means of cultural policies. My case studies focus upon the projection of Eve (in the Judeo-Christian cosmogony) and Pandora (in Hesiod’s Greek cosmogony), as problematic women, to say the least. Both are traditionally understood as “bad” women, who allow evil into man’s world. Several patterns of cultural selection and manipulation are analyzed and – hopefully to a certain degree –dismantled throughout the paper.

Keywords: Sexual / gender identity; reservation fields; cosmogonical models; ”evil / good” woman; logic of doubt; ”mystory”; Pygmalion; Galatea.

Manly Women and Womanly Men

Ethic disorder is quasi-unanimously claimed in the post-modern times (cf. Jacques Le Rider, Pascal Bruckner and Alain Finkielkraut, Gilles Lipovetsky, Georg Gadamer, Denis de Rougemont, only in the bibliography of this text). It forces us to admit that both the term and the concept of sexual identity have lost their traditional content: whether we like it or not, masculine identity has parted with its virile description just as much as feminine identity has done so with her maternal, naturalistic one. For some (Walter Benjamin or Georg Groddeck), the interrogation on “the very being of the feminine” is just one more pretext for jubilation and revelation of hidden, disregarded treasures. For others, the same question raises doubts on the solidity of the borders in between genders and threats that we shall be “lost in uncertainty” (Gilles Lipovetsky). Just as woman frees herself from her traditional role and statute, virility itself gets re-written in connection to manhood. The One becomes the Other, women become men as men become women, but this mutual identification has nothing to do with the Androgynous union: we could not be further from the axiological absolute unity of the anthropogeneses that follow an Androgynous matrix.

Though, there is nothing really new here, since la querelle des femmes has seized Europe’s attention for four centuries, along the Middle Ages to the dawn of the Renaissance, and at the beginning of the 20-th century the same “question of women” brings an oversaturated imaginary to explosion. The tensions accumulated in the gender imaginary lead either to virulent attacks on women (not only on feminism) such as Otto Weininger’s (“A man who holds his lowest position is infinitely higher than a woman on her highest rank.”[1]) or, on the contrary, to utopian feminist projects such as that of Georg Groddeck’s:

“The future belongs to the woman. Man’s brains are covered in dust. Only the woman is barbarian enough to alter this rotten culture […]. Let’s allow her to become aware of herself. Humankind is depending on her. Man disappears, but woman is eternal. […] A sacred depth lies asleep inside the woman. But who will know how to wake her up? For as long as the world existed, woman has been taught how to serve, when will she learn how to rule? […] Woman must be left to grow, freed from any manly model and from any manly thought! Powerful trends of thought will burst, new religions will emerge, new gods, new worlds […]. A culture of the powerful sex, of the woman, arises.” (Ein Frauenproblem[2]).

Generally, when confronted with the problem of de-polarizing the man-woman couple, culture produces extreme reactions: either feminist eutopias, or patriarchal distopias.

The religious imaginary is not by far any different: according to the accumulation or the clash of different tensions (social ones, economical, religious or political ones), it elaborates certain phantasms that will contain unsettling principles in what I call reservation fields, holding strict and precise rules and interdictions, in order to make the unpredictable manageable. For instance, Lucifer, who is different from Satan and is usually considered masculine, is originally a feminine figure and an extremely sexual one. “Lucifer” comes from the Latin “Lucem ferre” (“the light bearer, the one who brings light”), translated in Greek (in the Septuaginta) as heosphoros or phosphoros. The last name can be found in three cultic references: in the first one, as a title of Artemis (the Roman Diana is also Lucifera, the goddess of the moon and the night, but Lucifera is also the title of Bona Dea, another name for Magna Mater), the protector of childbirth, then, as another name for Eos, the goddess of dawn and finally as an attribute for Hecate, the torch bearer. The Gnostic Lucifer is Sophia, wisdom, the feminine partner of Christ. The phantasm of the masculine Lucifer, as fallen angel, starts only from Tertulian and Origenes, who promote it on account of mythical references. I take interest in this trend, because it shows a dual model of understanding the sexual differences. In gnoses, the demonic nature of Lucifer-Sophia is explicit:

“I have become like a devil, who dwells in matter, in whom there is no light. And I have become like a spirit who lives in a material body, in whom there is no power of the light.” (Pistis Sophia, Book I, Chapter 39).

Sophia bears a certain resemblance to Lilith who, just as well, desires to create the world without her masculine partner. In the Apocrypha of John, Sophia of Enoia,

„as an Eon, conceived a thought in herself, bringing to life the Unseen Spirit and Knowledge. She wanted to create something resembling herself, without the approval of the Spirit – who did not allow her to – and without her husband and without his approval.”

The Luciferal image is not the only one that proves that femininity is associated, in the religious imaginary, with the maleficent and sexuality. Accomplice to evil, flesh and its sexual exposure, femininity is one of the most notable candidates for the containment inside reservation phantasms.

Case study

I intend to discuss two cosmogonical models of great authority: the Biblical one and the Hesiodic one, since both of them associate woman and evil entering the world. To make my demonstration as clear as possible, I choose to work within an analogy in which elements of the book of Genesis are compared to those of Works and Days and The Theogony, Hesiod’s didactic poems. The analogy is supported by the similarities between the imaginary of the Biblical source P (Priestercodex, 6-th century b. C.) or of the Yahwist source J (10-th century b. C.) and those of Hesiod’s poems (9-th century b. C.). As far as the cosmological matrix is concerned, the Biblical model projects a three-fold anthropogenesis: creation – fall – redemption as well as a logocentric world that emerges with the divine word, more specific with naming. Its sacred, positive character, “good” (tob, that is, pleasant to the Creator, “meeting His expectations, according to His plan”), is re-stated after each day of the creation and it is stressed out by the chronological order, by time measurement and the classification of disordered temporality in seven days. The seventh day crowns creation with a “supplementary” sanctification, because God chooses that day as his resting time and as the day for contemplating his own making, thus the day of Divinity itself. The primordial mark of this world is tob, instituted as conformity with the Logos, the commandment of the only God. The only instance when God does not see tob, but, on the contrary, lo tob (the rupture of the conformity to the celestial project) is, in Genesis 2:18, right after man is created. Unlike the other creatures, which exist in multiplicity, the man alone presents itself in isolation, as a singularity, requiring the Creator’s re-intervention upon the anthropogenetic formula.

This is how an ezer kenegdo, “an help meet”[3], comes into being. Let us notice that, besides the projection of a God who is more than willing to adjust His own Creation, out of love for it, the agreement tob cannot be uttered until woman is created.

Hebrew-Christian thinking takes its strength out of logocentrism, out of naming, which is opposed to the non-assertive word, setting aside, through expansion, the metaphysically “heavy” word for man, as the human nominalistic Demiurge. On the other hand, silence or, on the contrary, dangerously excessive small talk, or simply meaningless talking, is reserved for woman, now an intimate of the Devil itself. How did we get to associate sexuality and original sin? Sexuality as such is only mentioned in the Bible as a sin when it is used outside wedlock (for the Kabala Rabbis, man is missing when the snake presents itself to the woman, because he is resting after he “knew his woman”). On the contrary, the prospect of procreation, of “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth”, is the very first blessing of the Adamic being, the one which will lead to the appearance of the Messiah and, thus, even to Redemption.

One possible interpretation warns us that the serpent in the Genesis, although not yet associated with Satan, still has phallic qualities within the sapiential narrative of the Yahwist, which it accumulated mythologically, and that ̀arom, „naked”, is followed a few verses away by ̀arum, „perverse”. This would be an indication that the human being is opened, through nakedness, towards both the divine tob (until the Fall) and the evil rà. The sensual nakedness of the snake contaminates human nakedness itself with low instincts and the Fall would be definitively associated with sexuality. Instead the free of guilt exposure of the human being, as it was under the protection of the Creator, nudity means here the recognition of one’s own vulnerability in front of a human history without the divine agreement.

My interpretation, which could probably be less doctrinal, is philological. I intend to draw the attention upon the displacement of the sin of speech over the sin of the body. Adamic sin comes through woman (I use the term “woman” and not “Eve”, since the latter is used by the Yahwist only in relation with the after-Fall woman, when man alone becomes Adam). Woman is the first one to engage the first human dialogue with another being, respectively with the messenger of evil. Even more, the woman herself is in here generically human, an adam which is turned towards the animality of the serpent, but also towards a different kind of wisdom than that i-mediately transmitted through the divine logos. Man and woman both take a bite out of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, tempted by the promise of absolute wisdom. Later, they gain the knowledge of both their own sin and their shame, even before God confronts them, and this way they remain redeemable, they are ready to be forgiven. Interestingly enough, out of the two trees in the middle of the garden, the primordial couple seems to completely ignore the tree of life, the source of immortality, which is not protected, in fact, by any divine interdiction. Just like Ghilgamesh, who misses the opportunity for eternal life, after finally being given it (Utanapishtim – the pre-figuration of the Biblical Noah – gives him the plant of eternal life, but Ghilgamesh loses it, also due to a snake), man and woman miss the same chance the moment God decides to remove them from Eden. Once they tasted wisdom or accessed immortality, they would become, from God’s analogous on earth, God Himself. The kind of knowledge brought by the snake, yadà, modifies the relationship between creation and the Creator according to an intimate relationship, like the knowing of the woman by the man.

Adamic sin and the sin of speech

In a treatise on speech and language, De vulgari eloquentia, Dante seems to believe that the need for „the signs of speech” would differentiate people not only from animals, but also from angels, since the latter have „a very quick and mysterious power of mind, through which they entirely disclose their thought at once”[4]. „That reckless Eve” is pointed out to have started, by her answering the snake, sinful speaking. She utters the word which, unlike the Adamic one (concerned with being godly), moves away from naming, establishing the dialogue. The first sample of human dialogical, relational speech thus belongs to Eve: talking to the serpent, woman draws misfortune upon the entire humanity. This is only the first of a series of disasters in the order of speech, the last one being the mixing of the tongues at the “Tower of Trouble” (“Alas, how embarrassed I am to refresh, by speaking about it, the shame of the human kind!”[5]). Speaking without reason becomes from now on the doomed feud of the woman kind and, in order to make them repent for their original imprudence, they shall be silenced.

Dante’s view on the relational character of woman’s weakness is the same as the traditional reading of the episode. Woman’s fatal intervention in the Fall scenario is seen quite often in relation to the misuse of human liberty and creativity (as it appears to de Rougemont). The feminine phantasm is indexed under evil, casting a shade over her providential creation as “an help meet” (as we shall see further on), just as well as over her original design as a “crown of creation”, that is an apotheotic end to a genesis that grows in both meaning and ontological value. Traditionally speaking, “woman is no more diabolic than man is, only easier to double-cross, since she has no objectivity, no concision to her evaluations, no distance from reality or, in a word, no rhetoric”, while Adam’s sin is more a question of victimization through seduction or of… romanticism:

“and here he is, this romantic Adam who gets caught. He imagines that his beautiful Eve, thanks to her famous feminine intuition, has found the way to heaven.”[6]

Traditional interpretation, nevertheless, does not take into account a quite recent objection raised by modern theology to the viewing of the woman’s gesture as a sign of weakness: the serpent presents itself as a food merchant, it has a fruit to sell, so it goes to the woman guided by reflex, since she alone – not the man – is the one designed by social custom to bargain for the family’s food. However, it is certain that this is the first episode in the Genesis where the woman is alone, by herself, with the man inexplicably missing. This is how the dialogue appears in a context where both the logocratic Creator and the Adam partner are missing. So far, the two human beings have been impossible to conceive in singularity, since they were created in interdependence, but at the very moment of the ophidian offer, the being they compose together is already open for dismemberment. This is also the point in which one’s identity is assumed as a negative differentiation: before he can say who he is, the human being says who he is not, avoiding responsibility. Pointing to the Other, he uses a negative logic in order to describe himself: the man as non-woman, and the woman as non-animal, carrying on, through this negative rationale, the logic of doubt, imposed by the incitation of the snake.

One theological point of view claims that dialogism is inherent to humanity: humans would be inclined towards dialogue through their very structure, as one who became a “living soul” through direct exposure to the face of God. The godly breathing of “the breath of life” is, in this view, a dialogical model to be followed throughout human history.

A story that associates woman with the threat of dialogue appears in Ovid’s 6-th book of Metamorphoses. Philomela, a virgin raped by her brother-in-law, threatens her aggressor:

“If I am able to, I shall walk and tell the whole world. If I am kept imprisoned in the woods, I shall fill the woods and tell the rocks, who know my misfortune.”[7]

The rapist then cuts her tongue, so that she cannot speak about the incest (“The tongue falls down and, trembling, seems to murmur on the black soil, just like a snake tail.”). Consequently, Philomela makes up a new language, of gestures but also of scriptures, writing her story out of “purple threads and white threads”[8], out of images sown on a piece of cloth. Let us notice that, in spite of the empathic tone of the writing towards Philomela’s hardship, a reference to the snake reemerges here, although it cannot be interpreted ideologically, except imagologically, since the organ of speech and the snake share a series of attributes: mobility, humectation, wiggling movement and, most of all, potential danger. Besides, it is not accidentally that the telling of the story makes her sister not only to want revenge, but also to hide her vengeance behind silence. The sexuality of the snake, that alludes, in the theological interpretation, to the penis, is a substitute, here, for the evil nature of the tongue. The most important connection realized by means of this superposition is the one between the tongue and the feminine, unpredictable sexuality. The same value is given to the woman’s encrypted speech in Salman Rushdie’s novel The Shame, where Ranni weaves several shawls about her own personal history, a “mystory” on cloth.

The Biblical tradition of the Fall is often related to the loss of the androgynous state, as “a dichotomy of the Primordial Man”[9]. Actually, this connection to the Hebrew-Christian tradition is not the only one being currently made: the chapter 27 of Genesis, in the Vulgata, describes sexual difference as a way “to deprive humans from a part of their possibilities” and projects an androgynous Adam. The theory of an androgynous Adam is widely circulated among the Kabala Rabbis, who believe in the existence of androgynous pre-Adamites, later replaced by the supremacy of the Adam-Eve couple. The belief has been perpetuated until the 12-th century, at the heretic Cathars, to whom Denis de Rougemont dedicates an entire book on the Western meanings of love. For an entire line of antic cultures, the primordial being and the Creator of the World are androgynous (e. g. Astarteea, the mother of the living worlds for the Phoenicians, the origin of one of the most powerful feminine cults of Oriental inspiration: that of the Great Goddess, of the Great Mother, of Magna Mater or Bona Dea, where we can find the attributes of Cybele, Demeter, Diana, but also, on different coordinates and in a different complex, that of the Virgin Mary[10]). Historically speaking, the first representations of the androgyn can be identified in sacred texts, as they justify, according to Eliade, the perfect coherence between the perfection of the Creator and his creation, between the absolute potency of the Demiurge and the potential of the created being. For Feuerbach, in The Essence of Christianity (1841), the metaphysical search for totality is expressed in interpreting Christ as androgynous, “half man and half woman”. Although the androgyny of the first human being is not named in the Bible, as it is in the Talmud, it is not less true that it represents one possible implication of the Genesis text.

Regarding the deficit of wise speech and implicitly, that of wise reason, that is imputed and imposed upon women, we have to take into account another important line of significations. We should consider the Aristotelian conception, perpetuated in the Middle Age patristic texts, according to which the man, sole bearer of procreative principle, is the only one who gives birth to the offspring, who only dwell inside woman’s womb. Or, the Aristotelians make the masculine the only norm, law and, nevertheless, reason (since the procreative principle is in here more of a “breath”, a “movement”, than a form or another of “matter”). Following the same considerations, the feminine means mother, chaos, illegitimacy and sexuality (that is, matter). As the only one who gives life, man associates woman to a natural weakness of the mind (that appears formulated as such in the Roman law). So not only the container of the physical progeny must be governed by man, but also the “vessel” of mind has to be carefully looked after by him, too. Both the rational pot and the pot of the womb must contain carefully selected seeds, in order to produce the expected crop. Our first mythological reference is that of Pygmalion and Galatea, the accomplished artist, too demanding to find a natural woman who is good for him as she is, and his perfect creation, ready to adore him and fulfill all his needs. A memorable sentence of André LaCocque couples, in the Biblical scenario, the good crop of the womb and knowledge:

“Perverted human choice has an immediate effect precisely upon the tool of knowledge itself. God strikes woman in her womb.”[11]

This is how an entire tradition begins, for which woman must be “directed” by her masculine mentor, where the educational role of the father does nothing else but announce and specifies the further role of the husband. Unlike the phantasm of the gossipy woman (responsible for letting evil in the world), this new phantasm is designed to point to the need to “correct” and “improve” natural feminine speech. A continuous practice is imagined to evaluate and adjust woman’s mind, because she naturally speaks without knowing, just like noisy Echo:

“At that time, Echo was a nymph, not just am echo, but still she was noisy; her mouth, just as it is now, was not use but to repeat, out of many words, the last ones. Junona had punished her in this way, for very often, when trying to catch the nymphs in the mountains with her Jupiter, she would stall her talking, until the nymphs ran away.”[12]

First human, first man, first woman

The Biblical outline of Genesis is, unlike the ancient Greek ones (that are, according to Jean Pierre Vernant, completely uninterested in the anthropogenetic meditation), greatly preoccupied with how human came into being. There are two stories in the Bible concerned with the making of the human being (Genesis 1: 26 – 27 and Genesis 2:7), the first one newer than the second (cf. the Priestercodex, 6-th century b. C., responsible for the tradition of “the King God” compared to the Yahwist source, 10-th century b. C., governing over the tradition of “the Anthropomorphic God”). For the next part of my paper I shall use the theological conclusions of André LaCocque[13], Eugen Pentiuc[14] and Robert Alter[15], in order to keep the doctrinal accuracy of my implications. In the first chapter of Genesis, the human being is designed as „man and woman”, zakar, „man, phalus” and nekeba, „woman, to pierce” (lat. perforata), which are terms that denote mostly the simmetry of the reproductive organs[16]. The idea is used by those who claim that Adam is androgynous. The primordial being is, in the same chapter of Genesis, either man-and-woman at the same time, or differentiated, from the very beginning, into man and woman, in equal amounts. Besides, he is imago Dei, a theomorphic creature, living close to his Creator, as „guardian” and „exploiter” of His garden (see also Timothy). Exactly in his capacity of God’s image, the primordial being is a unity in totality, nothing more than an anthropological reflex of an androgynous Divinity which is in itself One in the Multiple. Adam receives three roles: he takes care of the garden, („to dress it”), guards it („to keep it”) and, besides, gains a logocratic position, naming the living creatures and thus establishing their status.

The Biblical cosmogony casts a veil over the Hebrew creation of a former couple to Adam – Eve. In the midrash texts, Lilith, Adam’s first wife, appears as his competitor to his divine status. Both Lilith and Adam are made out of the same essence, that is out of clay, of earth, and this is why Lilith claims for herself the same ontological dignity as her husband, with whom she rather shares resentment than partnership. When she does not get what she wants, she utters the Unutterable Name and this way she flies away, leaving Adam for good. He receives, as a consequence, a new wife, the real “help meet”, made from his own body, so that their union is no longer threatened by structural irreconcilable differences. According to Ginzberg, the separation of the primordial being into two is possible because this one had two faces

(“When God was about to make Eve, He said: ‘I will not create her from his head, lest she be light-headed; nor from the eye, lest she be a coquette; nor from the ear, lest she be an eavesdropper, nor from the neck, lest she be proud, nor from the mouth, lest she be a gossip; nor from the heart, lest she be prone to jealousy, nor from the hand, lest she be light-fingered, nor from the foot, lest she be a gadabout. I will create her from a holy part of his body’ and even so, after God took all these precautions, woman came out with so many faults.”[17]),

but according to Pentiuc the same text makes us notice rather God’s concern for the creation of woman and also the inside, interior, hidden placement of that manly part from which woman is designed. The idea that Adam’s “help” must come from inside, and not from outside him lays at the basis of the creation of woman as his consubstantial counterpart.

In the second part of the Genesis, the man created out of dust is “living soul”, out of the divine soul himself (unlike the animals, who only have breath, psyche, in The Septuaginta), and bears the name of adam (from adamah, “piece of dirt, lump of clay”, but also “collectivity, undifferentiated being, which shall be differentiated later” or, in the Septuaginta, anthropos, “human being”, and not aner, “man, male”). There is nothing dualistic about this anthropogenetic projection, since the separation between body and soul does not exist. God is the one who establishes that a new creation is necessary, “an help meet”, ezer kenegdo. Let us first note that kenegdo does not imply subordination or submission of any kind, nor an ancillary relation, meaning only “to stay face to face, one next to the other, in spatial opposition to” (the idea that the first man suffered from solitude and asked himself for a partner comes from the tradition of the legends of the Jews, where he realizes the numeric difference, respectively his uniqueness and the animals coming in pairs to be named). Even more, ezer, very often translated as “help”, is used in the Old Testament as a determinative for God Himself, in situations when man desperately needs divine intervention[18], another proof to look at the creation of woman more like one could witness an apotheosis, a “crown to God’s doings”[19] or a “crown of creation”[20] for Robert Alter, who makes us pay attention to the scaling of the genetic imaginary from images of the whole, of the background, to images more and more focused in their visual print and their significance. Pentiuc also mentions that there is an anti-feministic matrix that the Hellenistic Septuaginta imposes in its selection of semantic equivalents: even in here, ezer kenegdo becomes kat auton (“according to man”)[21], transforming the relationship between two terms of the same rank in a subordinate relationship. The moment when this help is created is preceded by Adam’s fall in a deep sleep, induced by the divinity himself as an abolishment of consciousness whose role can be either “anesthetic”, to alleviate the separation trauma, or esoteric, to hide the mystery of separation and to give man a passive statute, so that man cannot pretend having participated in the creation of woman – both interpretations are equally presented in Biblical exegesis. Out of a tsela, “part, spatially detached” of Adam, God creates an ishsha, “woman”, whom he than gives back to Adam, who recognizes her as ishsha, since it was taken out of ish. Pentiuc takes the interpretation even further, specifying that man’s own self-awareness cannot manifest itself until he realizes, after seeing the woman, that he has been individualized through her creation.

The generic name of man, of the primordial man-and-woman being, adam, remains the exclusive property of the man and becomes a proper name, Adam, just as soon as man manifests its supremacy over the other beings, naming them, just as he will later name the woman Eve, that is “the Living One, mother of all beings”. By keeping the generic quality for himself, the man Adam takes Eve in his subordination, in the same way that he had taken hold of all the other beings, by logocracy. This is, in the genetic plot, the moment that starts an entire history of viewing woman as evil and temptation, up to the violence in Tertulian’s reference to woman as “the gate of Hell”. Some tend to easily forget the sharing of guilt in this template: it is true that woman is the first one to taste the forbidden fruit, but man is, at the same time, absent. Order is broken and in the new world woman is no longer non-mediately subordinated to God, as she was so far, but subordinated first to a new master, that is man. Woman’s subordination to Adam is a matter of punishment and not one of structure:

“the change […] from one ‘master’ to the other describes, we should get this right, some denaturized and abnormal relationship”[22].

The ascendance of man over woman is sexual. The woman’s suffering comes from the fact that, although she is warned upon the pain of birth giving (because pain, and not giving birth is the punishment), she still cannot refrain from surrendering her sexual desire, in ancillary dependence from man, due to her own limitation (incessant longing for her man).

The generic function of man is preserved in many languages at the very level of linguistic utterance: to name what concerns “the human being”, “the humanity”, the same terms are used as those for “man” (not only in English or German, which are the classic examples, but also in the regional usage of Romanian language, too: “a human being [om] with his woman” would mean “a man and his woman”). The prospect of androgyny is not lost forever, because the New Testament offers it again with the promise of the Heavenly Kingdom, where the distinction between man and woman is abolished (cf. Paul’s epistles or the apocrypha Gospel of Thomas:

“When you shall make one out of two, and when you shall make what is on the inside the same with what is on the outside and what is on the outside the same with what is on the inside, what is up the same with what is down and when you shall make man and woman the same thing, so that man will no longer be a man and woman no longer a woman”[23].

Saint Paul and The Gospel of John number androgyny among the virtues of spiritual perfection. The metaphor of bisexuality would offer, according to Eliade, an example that is similar to the paradoxical warnings of Christ who asks for a new birth or for the return to a childlike stage. In other words, the metaphor is just another expression of the professed metánoia, it is the attempt to find a „corporeal”, intelligible definition of the turning of values and of the conversion to a new regime of existence, one of absolute attributes.

Dialogical speech in opposition to assertive speech

The dialogue on what-you-should-not-speak-about starts the exile of the Biblical man and marks, inside this anthropogenesis, man’s entering history with the consciousness of one’s own sin, with the shame of one’s own naked body. The first censorship is also Adamic: covering in leaves the shameful nakedness mimics yet another concealment, just as important, that of the sinful speaking impulse. Following this associative line, a sin in the order of speech becom what is on the inside es a sin in the order of the body. There is a displacement between the attributes of the body and those of speech, which sometimes leads to utter superposition of the two. There are many accusations coming from the paternalist traditions which actually translate the fear that woman could speak again, establishing a direct relationship with the devil. Man’s fear of the sin that comes from inside the woman’s body could be born of another, deeper one, that, also using her body, woman could establish a charismatic, prophetic relationship between herself and the divinity, just as her voice, speaking without naming, can accept to re-embody the divinity on earth. This is the level where the birth of the Savoir can be seen as a replica, on entirely different coordinates, to the parthenogenesis of the original Mother, which suspends the masculine contribution to procreation.

The women-saints, the exceptions, are saved from women’s vicious relationship to speech, that transforms the feminine majority into a gossipy or silent community. Exceptional women are both pure in their bodies, refusing sexuality, and pure in their speech, „talking like men do”, not negotiating Satanic offers, but re-affirming the Logos, the Word of God. The first women who were given the right to write – that is to speak and to be listened to in the world of men are Christian saints, like Hildegard of Bingen or Herrard of Lansberg. Of course, this fact should be considered in the light of Western patriarchalism, which reserves for women certain fields that are invisible to the creation of ideas, the so-called “history of objects”. When confronted with the task of showing a history of women, museums around the world display collections of personal items or artifacts (jewels, shawls, umbrellas, dresses, hats), instead of written proofs. This, in itself, has to be connected to the fact that traditional culture favors theoretical thinking before practical one, the rational consciousness before the emotional one. In reference to the vexata quaestio of woman’s inferiority in front of man, Evola warns us that “logic and practical intelligence” is overrated, when it should have been a

“simple accessory to life and spirit which both are, together, differentiated, while intelligence in itself is amorphous and neutral and can be equally developed by man and by woman”[24].

Making a typology of words in the Western culture, Gadamer isolates three classes: the question-word, the legend-word and, finally, the promise-word (or the reconciliation-word[25]). By asking, woman sets her own finitude free, both inside the order of knowledge, and inside that of understanding and anticipating. Modern human knowledge is just a form “of the self-surpassing question” which gives away the fragility of human condition. The Fall starts with a question, but so does redemption, in which the question-word has to be followed by the reconciliation-word, which makes a promise. This is the most interesting of the three classes, because it is based on an absence, on a word not entirely uttered when its effect is already there, in action. By the promise made in the reconciliation-word, otherness is exceeded and the Other is back in the equation of the Identical.

There we have one of the criteria that make sexual differentiation possible in culture: the masculine and masculinity are the norm (“the one who speaks right”) against which the feminine and femininity are a deviation (“the one who fails to speak right”). According to this criterion, the woman is obviously an unfinished man, a non-man and her inferior configuration is obvious. It seems evident that the function given to the bad-woman-because-she-speaks phantasm is the containment of the turbulent principle of eroticism and carnality, who can invite, according to context, to establish a transcendental non-mediate communication with either the devil, or God.

From androgynous unity to sexual hierarchy

Both Eve and Hesiod’s Pandora – the woman given as a punishment to the titan Prometheus – are configured, so the feminist say, with a large dose of ontological indignity, much larger than that of their masculine partners. As far as Eve is concerned, the woman really takes part in giving content to “the scapegoat” institution, precisely used by Iudaism, which will reach a climax in the birth of God Christ from the woman without a man. The punishment given to the Biblical woman is considerably easier than the serpent’s, but heavier than the man’s. She becomes, from “an help meet”, from his “consubstantial counterpart”, her partner to the sinful plot, subordinated (both structurally, metaphysically – “and thy desire shall be to thy husband”, and morally – “and he shall rule over thee”) to the one who gives her a name. The term the Septuaginta uses to describe man’s rule over woman is derived from vlahon, “barbarian, primitive”, reiterated to describe the rule of the sinful wish over man. There is no doubt from now on in the Biblical story that the woman Eve is subordinated, in the history yet to come, to her man. The primordial, genetic unity has been fractured the very moment when man and woman stopped acting as a unity and started acting sexually, that is differentiated. And this is just another interpretive line of the superposition of the original sin over the sexual one, the sin of the fracture.

Eve acts in the name of a utilitarian philosophy, she can see that the tree is ”to be desired to make one wise” and “good for food” and “pleasant to the eyes”, that is, in a Aristotelian reading (cf. The Politics) of good as “useful”, can be convinced that she does the right thing. When initiating verbal communication in the history of mankind, she acts out the affirmation of consensus, different from the Adamic agreement. Later, in order to have Christ embodied in the form of man, Mary’s consensual answer is necessary, her verbal, explicit “yes”. Genesis also shows the extent to which Eve’s sin is connected to language and speech. The idea of the practical argument is also supported by Gadamer who, from the Aristotelian definition of the hand as the supreme organ, captures Eve’s hand reaching for the fruit. Her gesture becomes a manifestation of the voice of her body, which supports even more what the real, verbal voice, says. The human being communicates herself entirely in her hand, like in a figural synecdoche, just as it communicates in her tongue “the whole universe of the human experience of mankind”.

It should also be said that, in gnoses, woman is somehow a more favorable phantasm. Sophia, Jesus’ partner, is imagined as God’s primordial emanation. In Trimorphic Protennoia, Sophia Protennoia says: „I am Protennoia, the Thought who dwells in the Light.” Besides, she is granted salvation by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Just as well, the Holy Ghost is thought to be feminine in nature. In Jews it is stated: „This is how my Mother, the Holy Ghost, took me by a hair and carried me to the mountain of Tabor.” Most of the modern Gnostics identify Sophia with the Holy Ghost as the feminine member of a trinity that would follow the Father – Mother – Son template. The Primordial masculine man and the feminine Thought of God are, still, examples of the same fall of divinity into matter[26]. The matrix of a Trinitarian family seems to be extremely appealing to the common religious imaginary of our days: the depreciation of the Christian symbols in a whole range of cultural products (mostly movies and books) has to be discussed in the context of, on one hand, the reading of the apostolic figure of Mary Magdalene as the wife of Christ and, on the other, the reading of Mary Magdalene as the most important feminine figure of the Christian world, instead the Virgin Mary.

A good deal of the interpretations given to the masculine-feminine relationship in history dwell on the cliché that woman is „natural” while man is „constructed through culture”, “built up in education”, that is removed from nature. We can see here the seeds of a very interesting configuration of woman as vital force, capable of either destruction of the man or of reconnecting the man with his lost and regretted origin. This is the reading that Hesiod[27] gives to his phantasm of the woman. Unlike eve, Pandora does not explicitly enters the conflict of man and divinity, rather she participates objectually in the punishment of the latter, with no personal contribution. Let us notice that both the Hesiodian poems in which Pandora appears, The Theogony and Works and Days presuppose the existence of more „breeds of women”, and Pandora is the first one only as far as „the temptresses” are concerned. “The temptress” is “the most dangerous woman” of all. Unlike Prometheus, of divine origin, a Titan himself (preceding the Olympian gods), Pandora is a clay figure made by Hephaestus, a cacophonic appearance, an eidola, a contradictory image, kalon kakon. She is a beautiful evil, an ugly thing that pleases the eye, the one “gifted with all the gifts” in order to punish the man, the artificial outcome of an artificial creation, as is the creation depicted on her golden crown (given to her by Hephaestus to represent all the living creatures, which makes her the artificial Mother of all beings). In some variants of the myth, Pandora is associated with Anesidora, “the one who takes out the riches of the earth, who brings the gifts to the surface”, having agrarian fertility functions. Still, for Hesiod, she remains “a marvelous misfortune”, a “shrewd enticement” who will unleash the entire potential of evil and pain that the world successfully contained until her arrival inside the pythos in Epimetheus house (for most authors, Epimetheus, thought to be Prometheus’ brother, is no other than Prometheus himself, in his weak and unreasoning hypostasis). The temptress has only one initiative: she is, according to Hesiod, the drone, who eats up the entire wealth of the bee-man (a common phantasm in the masculine imaginary of the ancient Greece). Pandora the temptress and all the women who resemble her are projections of a hungry stomach, not only drone-women, but also stomach-women, always hungry for man’s destruction (another elaboration of a vagina dentata in the end, because they lead the man to impotence and death). Man stays close to an imaginary of the living creatures: he is the bee or the tree, while woman is a sort of intense heat, whose powers grow during summer, when “men’s virtue is weak”. She is a “devouring flame” that scorches man to death before his time. In this perspective, woman is demonic because of her sexuality and her opposition to man’s identity. She is the Other, her attributes always come against those of man and, as a consequence, valuing the latter, one must depreciate the first.

The sexual imaginary and its pressures

There are certain elements of ontological rehabilitation: sometimes connected to Anesidora, Pandora is associated to Hestia and governs over the home. The fireplace does not only epitomize all the attributes of the home, but also configures the omphalos mundi, where one needs no mediator to communicate with the gods. In this description, woman gathers some occult value since she would officiate the communication around the fireplace. The cosmogonical outline in The Theogony and Works and Days puts us in front of a privileged model of the Identity, where One means Power and masculinity (Zeus brings order in the world in the end of The Theogony with his last triumph over the beast Typhoon, “the last son” of Gaia and Tartars, “the defeated king of chaos”), while the Dual, the Multiple and the woman are conceived as dangers, perturbation agents of a physical, psychic and occult nature. In Pandora’s case, the connection between sexuality and the unrestling of the masculine, rational, socially efficient identity is clear and explicit. Unlike the first model we took into account, we can witness here the effect of the flame-woman phantasm, a devouring woman due to her sexual hyper-activism.

To the feminists, such a great deal of ontological subordination, present in most of the religious systems of the world is the outcome of their elaboration through masculine meditation. It exerts, as a consequence, such a pressure over both women (feeling guilty for their obvious lack) and men (feeling compelled to understand their masculine identity in terms of ascendant over women). It is quite relevant that women emancipation movements are very interested in the re-presentation of their voice, both collective and individual, personal, since this would open their access to formerly closed fields of theoretical thinking. On the other hand, from that very reason, feminine imaginary becomes obsessed with the phantasm of sexual inversion, of the metamorphosis into man (sometimes by finally revealing a sex that was, so far, ignored.

Montaigne, in his essay “The Power of Imagination”, narrates a series of sexual inversions that took place, he says, due to the persistence of a certain psychic template over the body[28]. His examples are interesting in themselves, but the most important thing seems to me the comment that he makes after giving them. It is his contention that the miraculous sex-changes are not a “great wonder”, since

“imagination has the power and it is always and very insistently enticed to such deeds, so that it can escape the obsesive thought and the ardent wish; it is easier for it to give those girls the manly part they want for good”[29].

“Imagination”, the life of the mind, prefigures, says the author of the Essays, certain physiological structures, and being stubborn over a single concetto, a single interior figure, we can alter our old physiology, “formatted” by the old psychic template:

“Plinius says to have witnessed the transformation of Lucius Cossitius from woman to man, on the day of his wedding. Pontanus and others say such changes took place a long time ago in Italy, because of the inflamed wish of either one’s own, or of his mother’s.”[30]

Also Montaigne tells us that he himself saw “a young man, called Germain, whom his entire village new as Maria until the age of 22”. Sexual inversion would be, so the author of the Essays believes, the result of some mind movements or, in psycho-analytic jargon, the by-product of the release of the subconscious from under the pressure of the id. Nevertheless, the problem raised by his examples of sexual inversion is not their credibility, but their inner motivation, which is precisely an imaginal solution to real identity crises.

A minority of women, before taking any physical or social action, go to a different solution: to transform themselves into men only at an imaginary level. The phantasm of a man-woman is for many of them the most accessible solution to get out of the crisis of identity depreciation, in a system that they do not really want to attack or deny. In time, this phantasm is internalized by men themselves as a solution to accept the accomplishments of some women without giving up their misogynistic creed. A reflex that has been preserved to our days is to say to an intelligent woman that she thinks like a man and mean it as a compliment. This contains a direct sexist implication, where the blame usually cast upon non-rational women is exceptionally suspended.

Around the 9-th century A. D., Western Europe has been victim to a religious fraud. A young woman of clerical vocation becomes so competitive in her religious zeal, that she conceals her woman identity, assuming that of a man and, finally, is said to have been elected Pope. The authors do not entirely agree upon this being a historical reality, or only a legend. However, what is interesting to us, in this analysis of phantasms, is the fact that the medieval imaginary is confronted with such a violent contradiction, that it preserves the name of Pope Joan as the name of one who refused to be silenced and aspired to the masculine logos. The hidden identity is significantly revealed by a “betrayal of nature”. Pope Joan falls in love and gets pregnant, so the truth is revealed. The phantasmatic solution to this masculine crisis of power is relevant, too: we are reminded once again that “nature speaks through women” and this is how Pope Joan acquires a double guilt, that of speech and that of discovering one’s sexuality.

Anyway, the case of Pope Joan can be a simple hoax, but things are historically supported in the case of Christine de Pisan, a noble woman of the 15-th century who, once widowed, provides for her entire household by means of her writing. She enters the dispute around the famous Le Roman de la Rose, of Jean de Meung, raising for the first time the question of a discursive representation of women. Interestingly enough, by doing this, she feels she becomes a man and is described as one by a chancellor of the University in Paris: insignis femina, virilis femina. In 1404, she writes a Book on the City of Women, an incredibly modern text, born out of her frustration of not being a man: “Why did you not allow me to come to this world as a man? I could have been as fulfilled as man says he is.” Her solution is activist: she imagines a utopian city, where all the apriorically imperfect women can gather together, to use “the axe of reason” and “not to torment themselves with such mad questions”[31]. We can see here how the phantasm of a man-woman, as first solution to become ontologically visible is left aside for a new definition of woman, where the woman identity becomes a well deserved acquirement.

Where does the woman soul disappear?

We cannot forget the most important example, which is the well-known “dispute around women”, “la querelle des femmes” or “la querelle de sexes”. The dispute belongs more to the Middle Ages than to the Rennaisance, although much of the debate was consumed during the 16-th century. However, its start is medieval, more explicitly the moment when the dualist, polarized understanding of the sexes, that has reigned so far, gives room to a new one: namely to the theory that describes woman as an unfinished man, mas occasionatus for Thomas of Aquinas. The dispute concerns the establishing of each gender’s “dignity” and contains different dissertations, reactions, mutual criticisms that men and women organize around this theme. The debut of the dispute is to be found around the 13-th century, in Le Roman de la Rose, especially in his second part, elaborated by Jean de Meung, who is considered the promoter of an “erotic communism” when he says: “You are, will be or were whores, by action or only by desire.” But the real extent of the dispute is reached around the 16-th century, when an anonymous German paper is issued under the title Disputatio nova, undertitled: Are women humans or not. The answer given by the paper is negative: women are not humans. They are suspected of not having any soul and are ontologically equal to animals. They are considered an error of nature and, even if this is not their fault, they have less ontological value than men and naturally wish to be “just like men are”. Two aspects should be pointed out now: women’s desire to resemble men is condemned as a dangerous intention to be free from men and their families, plus, on the other hand, marriage is blamed to impose upon man the unnatural burden of woman’s indignity. Marriage is imagined as the main obstacle on the path to wisdom and learning, a heavy chain that man assumes only to lose money, time and, most of all, spirit. From this point, we only have one step to make to the Illuminist projection of the conjugal couple as educational unit. In Emil or On education, Rousseau tries to confront the unfortunate outcome of society over human nature, taking his pupil back to the school of nature.

Imagining how the educator should anticipate and pre-direct the choosing of a wife for his pupil, Rousseau designs the ideal woman, intentionally called Sophie, for it is “a good name”, meaning “wisdom”. His act is similar to that of Pygmalion, who is not content with any actual woman and creates Galatea himself, who, once brought to life by gods, becomes the ideal wife. After enumerating her necessary attributes, Rousseau brings her to life – the living image of the “natural” woman, but also of the wise partner, full of desire to please her man. In the 4-th book of his treatise on education, Rousseau conceives the differences between men and women in terms of unilateral complementarities. Book 5 encourages educators to accept the differences between boys and girls as entirely natural and as the starting point for raising a woman who is “good” for “the man of nature”.

Woman is defined by Rousseau according to two factors: the needs of “the man of nature”, that is the needs of the ideal, natural man and, on the other side, the limitations and coerces of society. Referring to the principles to be respected in education, the philosopher mostly looks at the father-son relationship, but the father is also taken into account as the educator of the daughters:

“Try to show the reason why you ask them to do certain things, but make them do something at all times. Laziness and disobedience are the most dangerous flaws for them and the less adjustable, once they have been acquired. Girls must be diligent and hard-working. And this is not all: they have to learn how to obey, early in their lives. This misfortune (if this really is a misfortune) is connected to their sex; once they get rid of it, they will suffer horrible mischief. [..] You have to teach them how to suffer constraint, so that it will not upset them; teach them to supervise all of their phantasies and submit them to the will of another. If they want to work incessantly, you should, at times, make them do nothing.”

Women are obviously invested here with an auxiliary nature, just like in the normative books of the Bible: they are encouraged to “mortify” themselves not to suffer the frustration of not having access to socially forbidden values. Rousseau however blames the contradictory existence of women on “our wicked institutions”, which force them to continuously “fight with themselves”, but still he blames the social disorder of the natural world on the woman:

“it is true that her sex suffers now part of the evil things she brought upon us”[32].

A saved woman

As a conclusion, in Rousseau’s treatise, Emil, three theories of gender differentiation are combined: the ancillar woman, “formatted” to answer and to meet man’s needs and desires, but also the woman as completely foreign to the man, moved by a completely opposite principle than the rational, masculine one, namely a principle of eroticism, of “the eternal feminine”. The third line of the argument is given by the description of woman as the eternal pupil of man, eager to be taught, first by her father, than by her husband, the alphabet of practical life. At some point, the author understands love in terms of a competitional relationship:

“to be loved, you try to make yourself available for love, to be favored by love, you have to make yourself more loveable than anyone else, at least in front of the object of your love. This is why you start looking at your peers, start comparing yourself to them and thus rivalry, jealousy and competition appear.”[33]

In a similar way, Freud will also place rivalry, envy and hatred, that is masochism, at the basis of the wish and the ability to differentiate between I and other, but also between I and the outside world. To the psychoanalyst, all of these make intellectual knowledge possible thanks to the differentiating powers of the human psychic, which acts like “the knight of hatred” (objectivity would be then a particular case of aggressiveness). Lacking scientific spirit, over-narcissistic and envious, women act in the name of the erotic principle. For Rousseau, what distinguishes good from evil, moral from social perversion is not love in itself (formerly established as the only educational precept), but the way love is handled by the educator. Love has to be pre-directed, met with certain expectations, with a set of definite values, with a phantasm of love that will govern the processing of both qualities and flaws of the object of love:

“you love more the imagination you make of the object it represents. If you saw what you love as she is, there would be no love on earth. When you are no longer in love, the person you love stays the same, but you do not see her like you used to, the veil of her prestige falls off and infatuation disappears. This is why, by giving him an imaginary object [to love], I master the possible comparisons and easily prevent the illusion that real objects could give.”[34]

De Rougemont also analyzes love in terms of appropriation to the subject: as long as he lets himself suffocated by woman, through love, man harms himself and the woman, because, “shapeless as she is”, she awaits for the Pygmalionian effort, for her pouring into shape by the self-aware man and by his formative responsibility.

I have isolated in the analysis above some particular areas of the sexual imaginary which I called reservation fields because they allow the surviving of some threatening, unsettling cultural projections of a menacing woman, in formulas that indexes them to a systemic order, often by culpability mechanisms. Since the projections I talked about are identity related, they create specific pressures inside the entire imaginary, generating a-typical phantasms, such as the woman-man or even the man-woman. The feminist argument is, still, completely unproductive as long as it uses the same definitions as the masculine theories. An imaginary adjustment is necessary, in order to project new definitions, which positively value the fragmentary, the disorder and the turbulence. What is, in the traditional imaginary, a handicap (the limitation of the feminine self’s access to the world of the masculine logos) becomes the opportunity to admit to an alternative existence. Thus, one does not reject the ego-logic of the social I, but favors de-centering as the mode of placement in the world. The defining phantasm of this alternative type of imaginary is the Dionysian woman, which I shall discuss in a different study. Her imagological advantage is her openness to the epiphanies of the whole, to the mystic of life. The Dionysian woman in the paternalist imaginary is viewed like a threat to the Apollonian masculine identity, as an evil entity and as a candidate to silence. In a different formula, even silence would gain a new dimension, an active, creative, Wittgensteinian one, since only through silence one can regain the impossible to express and can expect for the epiphany to happen.

Carmen Fenechiu

Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

The term numen in Lucan’s The Civil War

Abstract: The present paper intends to investigate, as its title suggests, the uses of the term numen in Lucan’s epic: “The Civil War”. The morpho-syntactic analysis of the verses where numen is employed reveals three senses of this notion: “power”, “divinity”, “statue”. Moreover, the examination of these passages uncovers not only the meanings of numen, but also the Stoic conception which underlies the poem.

Keywords: Stoicism; Seneca; Lucan; numen; divine power; deification.

Determining such a complex and disputed concept as numen implies in the first place an analysis of its uses in the writings of Latin authors. This opinion, formulated in 1971 by Domenico Fasciano in his article: „Numen, reflexions sur sa nature et son rôle”[1], was applied by the same author in two of his later papers studying the meanings of the term in the poems of Ovid [2] and Vergil[3]. The present article, which is placed between similar coordinates, tries to investigate the utilization of numen also in the domain of poetry, but in an epic from the post Augustan age. In order to distinguish the senses of numen, the morfo-syntactic analysis will be used both at microcontextual and at macrocontextual level. The historical context will also be taken into consideration.

Lucan’s “The Civil War” is of interest mainly due to the high number of verses where the term numen appears. The recurrence of this notion, used almost exclusively in connection with the divine world, is surprising in an epic whose conception is different from the classical epos exactly through “the absence of the traditional miracle”[4]. Actually, as Pierre Grimal noticed, the fact that “the divinities do not intervene in the action” does not imply their absence from the epic, “they are not completely absent, but their presence is inner: in the heros’ souls” [5], in compliance with the conception of the poem[6].

The preponderance of instances where numen is used with the sense of “divinity” (“deity”) denotes the imposing of the secondary meaning, documented beginning with the Augustan age. The more ancient signification of “power” (when numen is connected with a divinity), respectively “divine power” (when numen is assigned to other concepts), is nevertheless attested, but in a reduced number of passages:

4.194-195 “Pro numine fata sinistro / Exigua requie tantas augentia clades!” (“a curse on Fortune, whose malignant power uses a brief respite to make great calamities still greater!” – Duff)[7]; numen’s sense of “divine power” is confirmed by the qualifying adjective sinistrum (“numine fata sinistro” – “Destiny of an ill-omened power”);

5.73-74 “Mons Phoebo Bromioque sacer, cui numine mixto / Delphica Thebanae referunt trieterica Bacchae” (“The mountain is sacred to Phoebus and to Bromios, in whose honour the Bacchants of Thebes, treating the two gods as one, hold their triennial festival at Delphi” – Duff).

No matter if numen is interpreted as ablativus qualitatis subordinate to the pronoun cui (“for whom, having a mixed power, the Bacchants of Thebes hold etc.”), or as a subject of an causal ablativus absolutus (“for whom, because of their mixed power, the Bacchants of Thebes hold etc.”), the meaning of the term remains the same (numen = “power”), the attribute “divine” would imply a tautology.

The sense “power” is also attested in the plural:

9.544-548 “Stabant ante fores populi, quos miserat Eos, / Cornigerique Iovis monitu nova fata petebant; / Sed Latio cessere duci, comitesque Catonem / Orant, exploret Libycum memorata per orbem / Numina, de fama tam longi iudicet aevi” (“Before the doors of the temple stood messengers from the East, seeking to learn tha future by the warning of horned Jupiter. But these gave place to the Roman general; and his officers begged Cato to test the deity so famous through all the land of Lybia, and to pass sentence on a reputation of such long standing” – Duff).

To attribute numina (pl.) to a single divinity (in this case, to Jupiter Ammon – “and the companions ask Cato to test this god’s powers renowned through all the land of Lybia”) copies a cliché documented since the Augustan period[8].

The poet grants numen (“divine power”), by extrapolation, to some original concepts: to a place and to the ancient customs.

1.605-608 “Dumque illi effusam longis anfractibus urbem / Circumeunt, Arruns dispersos fulminis ignes / Colligit et terrae maesto cum murmure condit / Datque locis numen” (“While the long procession winds its way round the wide city, Arruns collects the scattered fires of the thunderbold and hides them in the earth with doleful muttering. He gives sanctity to the spot” – Duff).

The assigning of numen to a place becomes explicit through the integration of the quoted verses in the episode which holds the description of the expiation ceremonies of some prodigia. Arruns, one of the Etruscan seers, called to avert the unfavourable predictions, burries – as part of the more complex expiation ritual, that includes the lustation and the slaughter of a bull – “the spreaded fires of the thunderbolt” and, through this, the place becomes a religious one, is charged with “divine power” (not an effective power, but one granted by the ritualic gestures “datque locis numen” – “he bestows divine power to the place”, a power characteristic to the gods). In this instance, the meaning of numen is very closed to that of “divine essence”, “divine nature”.

The dense and sometimes excessively synthetic style of the poem allows interferences in identifying the senses of the term numen, according to the syntactic content given to its determinative. For instance, in the passage

9.517-521 “Quamvis Aethiopum populis Arabumque beatis / Gentibus atque Indis unus sit Iuppiter Hammon, / Pauper adhuc deus est nullis violata per aevum / Divitiis delubra tenens, morumque priorum / Numen Romano templum defendit ab auro” (“Though the Ethiopians and Indians and wealthy Arabians have no god but Jupiter Ammon, yet the god is still poor, and his dwelling-place has remained for ages unblemished by wealth; and the deity, true to the good old fashion, defends his shrine against Roman gold” – Duff),

numen’s significance is:

a) “divine power”, if the genitive morum is considered as indicating the possession (“the divine power belonging to the ancient customs”) or

b) “divinity”, referring to Jupiter Ammon, if morum is interpreted as genitivus qualitatis („oldfashioned divinity”).

The majority of examples attests, as already mentioned, the use of numen with this latter sense: “divinity”. Even if sometimes the term is used as a synonym for deus, however, because numen is a very comprehensive concept, which can indicate different types of deities – not only gods, but demigods as well -, I find more advisable to translate numen by „divinity” or „deity” rather than by „god”.

From the very beginning of the poem, in the praise of Nero, numen is twice used, the first time in relation to the traditional gods (1.50), the second time in connection with Nero (1.63). The civil wars being considered necessary in order to establish the reign of Nero, “from whom Lucan expects to bring back on Earth the Golden Age”[9] and a new founding (not only of Rome, but of the Empire as well), the poet’s position regarding the deification post- and ante mortem of the emperor is not surprising.

If Nero’s transformation into a god after his dead is presented as a completely accepted fact:

1.50-53 “tibi numine ab omni / Cedetur, iurisque tui natura relinquet, / Quis deus esse velis, ubi regnum ponere mundi” („every god will give place to you, and Nature will leave it to you to determine what deity you wish to be, and where to establish your universal throne” – Duff),

on the contrary, granting the status of “divinity” during the emperor’s life is limited only to the poet himself, through the pronoun mihi:

1.63 “Sed mihi iam numen” („but to me you are divine already” – Duff. More precisely, “but to me you are already a deity”).

This rank of “divinity” is assigned, in Lucan’s epic, not only to Nero, but to the city of Rome as well, in the invocation pronounced at the crossing of the river Rubicon:

1.199-200 “summique o numinis instar, / Roma, fave coeptis” (“and thou, O Rome, as sacred name as any, smile on my enterprise” – Duff. Scilicet: “O Rome, similar to the highest deity, favour my enterprise”).

Though dominated by resentments once Nero’s attitude towards him changes, the poet’s opinion on the emperor’s apotheosis does not modify stricto-sensu the meanings of the term, which is used on with the sense of divinity”, but Lucan’s perception regarding the act of deification and, moreover, of the gods’ role is totally different, for is denied even the divinities’ interference in human life, an Epicurean idea:

7.445-447 “Sunt nobis nulla profecto / Numina: cum caeco rapiantur saecula casu, / Mentimur regnare Iovem” („In very truth there are no gods who govern mankind: though we say falsely that Jupiter reigns” – Duff; sc. “there are no deities for us”).

Emperors’ apotheosis is even considered a revenge against the gods, who did not intervene in order to put an end to the slaughter of Pharsalia:

7.454-459 “mortalia nulli / Sunt curata deo. Cladis tamen huius habemus / Vindictam, quantam terris dare numina fas est: / Bella pares superis facient civilia divos; / fulminibus manes radiisque ornabit et astris / Inque deum templis iurabit Roma per umbras” (“Man’s destiny has never been watched over by any god. Yet for this disaster we have revenge, so far as gods may give satisfaction to mortals: civil war shall make dead Caesars the peers of gods above; and Rome shall deck out dead men with thuderbolts and haloes and constellations, and in the temples of the gods shall swear by ghosts” – Duff).

With the same meaning (“divinity”), numen is found in a remark of Lucan inserted in the eight book of the epic:

8. 458-459 “si numina nasci / Credimus aut quemquam fas est coepisse deorum” (“if we believe that deities have birth, or it is lawful to hold that any of the gods had a beginning” – Duff).

As for the degree of determination, it clearly follows from some passages – either from the context or by the apposition (noun or adjective) – that by numen (in singular or in plural) is indicated a personal deity, with or without indications concerning its identity:

5.400 “Iliacae numen quod praesidet Albae” (“the god who presides over Trojan Alba” – Duff); referring to Jupiter Latiaris;

9.158 “Evolvam busto iam numen gentibus Isim” (“I shall rifle the grave of Isis, now worshipped over the world” – Duff; sc. “in her grave I will turn over Isis, now a deity for different people”);

8.142-143 “Accipe, numen, / Si quod adhuc mecum est, votorum extrema meorum” („Hear my last prayer, ye gods, if any god is still upon my side” – Duff);

2.43-44 “Nec non bella viri diversaque castra petentes / Effundunt iustas in numina saeva querellas”(“The men also, setting out for the war and for the camps of the rivals, poured out just complaints against the cruel gods” – Duff);

3.415-416 “non volgatis sacrata figuris / Numina sic metuunt” (“men feel less awe of deities worshipped under familiar forms” – Duff).

The acceptation of the term numen as personal “divinity” is sometimes confirmed by his topic proximity with words like deus (dei) or superi:

5.116-118 “Nam si qua deus sub pectora venit, / Numinis aut poena est mors immatura recepti / aut pretium” („For, if the god enters the bosom of any untimely death is her penalty, or her reward, for having received him” – Duff; sc. „untimely death is either the punishment or the reward of the received divinity”).

5.499-501 “Dum se desse deis ac non sibi numina credit, / Sponte per incautas audet temptare tenebras / Quod iussi timuere fretum”( “and, when he saw him still delay, believing that Heaven was more true to him than he to Heaven, he ventured in the dangerous darkness to defy the sea, thus doing of his own accord what others had feared to do when bidden” – Duff; sc. „believing that he is neglectful of the gods and not the divinities of him“).

6.523-525 “Nec superos orat nec cantu supplice numen/ Auxiliare vocat nec fibras illa litantes / novit” (“She adresses no prayer to Heaven, invokes no divine aid with suppliant hymn, and knows nothing of the organs of victims offered in sacrifice” – Duff; sc. “She does not pray to the celestial gods, summons no assistant divinity with suppliant hymn”).

6.598-9 “Vel numina torque / Vel tu parce deis et manibus exprime verum” (“Either put the gods to the question, or leave them alone and extort the truth from the dead” – Duff). Noticeable is the alternance of the contrasting verbs torque – parce.

The interest of the two last examples consists not only in the informations they give about numen, but also in the religious conceptions they express, the quotations being part of a larger passage (6. 413-830) dedicated to Thessalian magic. Lucan pays close attention to a session of necromancy carried out by Erichto at the demand of Pompey’s son, Sextus Pompeius. By describing the magical practices of the Thessalian witches, who succeed to attract and to submit the gods’ power and will, the poet traces a clear distinction between religion and magic, the latter being an insult to the gods and in conflict with the world’s order[10]. In this context too numen is placed on the same level, coordinated with dei, respectively with superi. Numen’s signification is nevertheless ambiguous; in 6.523-525, the sphere and the content of numen could also be interpreted as “divine power”, due to the adjective auxiliare. Slight differences can be noticed between the predicates: orat – vocat.

As terminus regens of an explanatory genitive, that indicates the region where the power of that specific divinity is manifested, numen is only spatially identified:

7.168-171: “At tu, quos scelerum superos, quas rite vocasti Eumenidas, Caesar? Stygii quae numina regni / Infernumque nefas et mersos nocte furores, / impia tam saeve gesturus bella litasti?” (“But Caesar – what powers of darkness, what fiends did he invoke without let or hindrance? What deities of the Stygian realm, what Horror of Hell, and Madness shrouded in gloom? Though he was soon to fight an infamous battle with such cruelty, his prayer was heard. – Duff)

Near passages that allow the interpretation of numen as personal, individualized divinity, perceived in accordance with traditional religious ideas, the epic includes also verses, where the dual conception of the Stoic philosophy about the divinity is also noticeable in the uses of the term numen. The equal acceptance of monotheism and polytheism creates complications in interpreting the notion of numen, especially when the term is employed in singular, because it is difficult to establish if the concept is used in connection to a personal, but not clearly identified god, or to that Stoic divinity, the pre-eminently God, identical with the nature, the universe and the destiny. For instance:

1.148-149 “Successus urguere suos, instare favori / Numinis” (“he followed up each success and snatched at the favor of Fortune” – Duff; sc. “he snatched at the deity’s favor”) or

6.314-315 “Deserit averso possessam numine sedem / Caesar et Emathias lacero petit agmine terras” (“Caesar abandoned a position he had occupied against the will of Heaven, and made for the land of Thessaly with his battered forces” – Duff; sc. “Caesar abandoned a position he had occupied without the divinity’s assent”).

This blend of old and new, tradition and innovation, myth and philosophy in a hazy mix is obvious in the episode of the Delphic oracle, especially in the description of the prophetic ecstasy by which the priestess is seized (5.64-236). The first verses describe, in agreement with the tradition, the taking into possession of the sanctuary by the god Apollo after Python is killed, but in the following verses the poet expresses his doubts regarding the identity of the divinity that manifests itself in this sanctuary:

5.86-88 “Quis latet superum? quod numen ab aethere pressum / Dignatur caecas inclusum habitare cavernas? / Quis terram caeli patitur deus” (“Which of the immortals is hidden here? What deity, descending from heaven, deigns to dwell pent up in these dark grottoes? What god of heaven endures the weight of earth” – Duff).

This questions, although in contradiction with the myth previously presented, make clear that this god is a celestial one: “quis superum”, “quis caeli deus”. This interpretation, consistent with the tradition, is immediately forsaken by the poet in favour of the Stoic doctrine that a large part of the divinity (generically named Jupiter) is integrated into the world and identical with it. As a result, Lucan introduces the idea that in this sanctuary would manifest itself a Jupiter in the Stoic conception:

5.93-98 “Forsan terris inserta regendis / Aere libratum vacuo quae sustinet orbem, / Totius pars magna Iovis Cirrhaea per antra / Exit et aetherio trahitur conexa Tonanti. / Hoc ubi virgineo conceptum est pectore numen / Humanam feriens animam sonat” („It may be that a large part of the whole divine element is embedded in the world to rule it, and supports the globe poised upon empty space; and this part issues forth through the caves of Cirrha, and is inhaled there, though closely linked to the Thunderer in heaven. When this inspiration has found a harbour in a maiden’s bosom, it strikes the human soul of the priestess audibly” – Duff; sc. „when this divinity enters the maiden’s bosom”).

In this instance, it is not possible to establish either to which god, or to what kind of divinity (Jupiter – non-personal, Apollo – personal) the syntagm hoc numen refers. (The term numen is used again a few verses later, but this time by numen is clearly indicated the god Apollo: 5.163 “insueto concepit pectore numen” – “and her bosom for the first time drew in the divine power” – Duff; sc. „she received the divinity in her bosom unaccustomed to this”).

A proof that by numen can be indicated an impersonal divinity constitutes Cato’s refusal to consult Jupiter Hamon’s oracle, refusal founded on the precepts of the Stoic philosophy. In Lucan’s epic this divinity is called Jupiter, as in Seneca („Naturales quaestiones” 2.45.1), but in equating this divinity with everything that is seen and that moves it is clear that the poet does not allude to a traditional Jupiter:

9.573-580 “Haeremus cuncti superis, temploque tacente / Nil facimus non sponte dei; nec vocibus ullis / Numen eget, dixitque semel nascentibus auctor / Quidquid scire licet. Sterilesne elegit harenas / Ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum, / Estque dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aer / Et caelum et virtus? superos quid quaerimus ultra? / Iuppiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris” (“We men are inseparable from the gods, and, even if the oracle be dumb, all our actions are predetermined by Heaven. The gods have no need to speak; for the Creator told us once for all at our birth whatever we are permitted to know. Did he choose these barren sands, that a few might hear his voice? did he bury truth in this desert? Has he any dwelling-place save earth and sea, the air of heaven and virtuous hearts? Why seek we further for deities? All that we see is God; every motion we make is God also” – Duff; sc. „the divinity has no need of voices”).

Beside these two already examined senses, numen is also used in this poem with a rarely (for instance, Vergil, “Aeneis”, 1.447) attested sense: simulacrum, “statue”.

1.379-380 “Si spoliare deos ignemque immitere templis, / Numina miscebit castrensis flamma monetae” („If you bid me plunder the gods and fire their temples, the furnace of the military mint shall melt down the statues of the deities” – Duff).

The uses of this notion in „The Civil War” reflect, on the one hand, changes at the level of religious beliefs, due to the influence of the philosophical schools (especially, the Stoic one), and, on the other hand, the spiritual and ideative affinity between Lucan and Seneca, manifested itself in the swing of the two authors between the traditional religious conceptions and the Stoic ones about divinity.

Ruxandra Cesereanu

Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania

Cultic Conflicts between Gods in the Greek Tragedy

Abstract: The divide between humans and gods is commonplace in the Greek tragedy: at the beginning, as directors of tragic performances, the gods cause the transformation of humans into moving troupes, robotized and manipulated, armies of industrious insects to the benefit of some religious cult. When conscience and revolt surge in humans, the gods are offended and act punitively. However, sometimes the gods get involved in controversies among them precisely because of the mortals, the issue to be debated upon being arguably the pertinence or the lack of pertinence, at a certain moment, of a religious cult and of its worshippers. Although they may take humans as a pretext, the clashes between gods are always of a religious nature. They are violent precisely because they lead to the extinction or the banning of a religious cult in favor of another. Such clashes appear above all in some of the Greek tragedies such as The Eumenides – from Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia – and Euripides’ Hippolytus and The Bacchae.

Keywords: Greek tragedy; Aeschylus; Euripides; Erinyes; Eumenides; Apollo; Athena; Orestes; Hippolytus; Phaedra: Theseus; Artemis; Aphrodite; Bacchae; Dionysus; Pentheus.

The chasm between humans and gods is a commonplace in the Greek tragedy: at the beginning directors of some tragic performances, the gods cause the transformation of humans into moving troupes, robotized and manipulated, armies of industrious insects to the benefit of some religious cult. When conscience and revolt surge in humans, the gods, offended, act punitively. However, sometimes the gods get involved in controversies among them precisely because of the mortals, the issue to be debated upon being the pertinence or the lack of pertinence, at a certain moment, of a religious cult and its worshippers. The clashes between gods, even if they have as a pretext the humans, are always of a religious nature. They are violent just because they lead to the extinction or the banning of a religious cult in favor of another. Such clashes appear above all in some of the Greek tragedies such as The Eumenides – from Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia – and Euripides’ Hippolytus and The Bacchae.

The most ample religious clash discussed by Aeschylus is to be found in The Eumenides. Not in vain does the plot of the tragedy begin in Apollo’s temple from Delphi, where the woman prophet Pythia invokes the patron of the temple and the other Olympian gods. Pythia is also the first to delineate the Erinyes or the Furies (ancient deities in conflict with the Olympians), exaggerating their gloomy appearance:

“they weren’t exactly women, / I’d say more like Gorgons – then again, / not much like Gorgons either. Years ago / I once saw a picture of some monsters / snatching a feast away from Phineas. / But the ones inside here have no wings – / I checked. They’re black and totally repulsive, / with loud rasping snorts that terrify me. / Disgusting pus comes oozing from their eyes.”

This hideous portrait is meant to terrify (one of the effects the Greek tragedy counted on), but also to suggest that, even at a physical level, the chasm between the old and the new deities was visible; the Olympians were “aesthetic” and solar, the Erinyes – hideous and gloomy.  The second to delineate the Furies is god Apollo, trying to define them from a cultic, psychic, spiritual viewpoint: “these frenzied creatures overcome with sleep, / just lying there, these loathsome maidens,” sheltered in Tartarus. Then, awoken from the sleep instilled by Hermes and understanding that Orestes (the human prey who is the cause for their aggressive polemics with the Olympians) is still unpunished and free, the Erinyes depict themselves pointing out the decay and the humiliation inflicted on them by the new gods. Addressing to Hermes (Orestes’ guide towards Athens), they bewail in the old people’s way: “- For a god you’re young – / but still you trample on more ancient spirits” or “-Younger gods are doing this – / they push their ruling power / beyond what’s theirs by right.” The main culprit for their cultic decay is considered to be Apollo, who is accused of having tainted even his own cult since the omphalos (the sacred stone and navel of the world) is touched by Orestes, the matricide, with his protector god’s consent:

“The prophet soils the hearth, / pollutes the shrine himself, / acting on his own behalf. / against divine tradition, / he honors human things. / – He sets aside decrees of fate / established long ago.”

The charge is grave and offending, the Erinyes trying thus to conceptually maculate one of the essential sacerdotal elements from Delphi, the omphalos; consequently, Apollo reacts punitively chasing them from his temple and scoffing at them: “Get out!”, “Move on!” The Erinyes are purposefully painted by Phoebus in hideous tinges:

“The way you look, your shape, says what you are – / some blood-soaked lion’s den might be your home.”

The Furies perceive the linguistic offence (and religious, in fact) and they protest accordingly, reprimanding the Olympian god: “why insult us”, “Don’t try cu curb our powers with your words”. But this is only a verbal teasing while the most important accusation brought by the Furies is that Apollo himself (the rational eminence) is the guilty one for the matricide committed by Orestes, through a moral participation. Practically, this is the key moment that launches the downright polemics between the old and the new deities.

Apollo considers that the parricide (Agamemnon’s murder by Clytemnestra) is graver than the matricide (Clytemnestra’s murder by Orestes) since the murdering of the man (who is husband and king) is more blamable than the murdering of the queen (and mother); the murdering of Agamemnon invalidated the very sacred marriage (protected by Zeus and Hera) between man and woman. Thus, Clytemnestra’s debasement (guilty of adultery and regicide) is considered to be more serious than Orestes’ debasement through matricide.

The controversy is temporarily ceased in this point, since the Erinyes-bitches scent out Orestes’ track while he is in an imploring posture on the Acropolis: Orestes leaves a “trail”, him being impure and stained by his murdered mother’s blood; therefore he can be scented out; out of punitive excess, the Furies promise to drink Orestes’ blood the moment he is captured. For a second time Orestes is saved from the Erinyes’ attack with Apollo’s help, consequently, the insulted Furies ask for Mother Night’s protection. The old deities feel again the need to define themselves, but this time in an ampler self-portrait. Here it is: they are instances that chase the murderers’ blood, only the gods are immune to their punishing action; they are not ordinary women, but mad, black, vampire-like creatures who live in the dark, as a sort of connection between the dead and the living. Their punitive and cultic mission was established in the past, “allowed by Fate / and ratified by all the gods”.

This is the moment when Apollo is somehow out of his depth in his role and, consequently, goddess Athena intervenes in Orestes’ trial and in the Erinyes’ lament by convoking the Areopagus, the Athenian court, to give the verdict on the matricide. The Erinyes already sense that, following the respective trial, their tradition and cultic function will be invalidated; their premonition becomes even stronger since Apollo is to appear as main witness in Orestes’ favor and Hermes is to follow him. The essential Apollinic argument is that, spiritually and morally, the sons always belong to their fathers, therefore they always have to avenge the murdering of the father seen as a graver sin than the murdering of the mother. Illustrating the link to the paternal spirit, Phoebus gives as an example even a woman, Athena, carried when an embryo in Zeus’ head, her father.

Feeling their position endangered, the Erinyes accuse Apollo of being a “maculated prophet” and, consequently they claim from the Athenian court (which they barely accept) not to be humiliated since they have already been degraded. They promise a similar religious vendetta: the persecution of the Athenian city if the verdict is not in their favor. However, Apollo denies their role and he declares emphatically their failure even before the verdict is given:

“Among all gods, old and new alike, / you have no honor. I will triumph here.”

The provocation is disdainful since Phoebus declares the Furies to be despised not only by the present Olympian gods, but also by the presupposed old deities (he probably makes reference to old deities allied with the Olympians). Yet, the trial ends not due to Apollo’s emphatic magnificence, nor to the Furies’ overt threats, but strictly due to the ballot awarded by goddess Athena, who acts in Orestes’ favor (considering herself to be a virile goddess, a father’s daughter). Athena’s ballot is a decisive one: even if Zeus is not visible all along the trial, he can be sensed as a divine presence dissimulated behind Athena, who represents him. Moreover, he stands in for Orestes’ father – Agamemnon -, in the same way in which Athena is “the good mother”, from a psychoanalytic point of view and according to some scholars, as opposed to “the evil mother” (Clytemnestra). With such divine adoptive parents, Orestes can only be declared not guilty; or, more precisely, not guiltless but forgiven.

Defeated in this religious trial, the Erinyes threaten the Greek land with diseases, sterility, death, “dark manna”: “Now our anger turns against this land / We’ll spread our poison – how it’s going to pay, / when we release this venom in our heart / to ease our grief. We’ll saturate this ground. / It won’t survive.” This is the moment when Athena has a first cultic intervention, she promises the Furies both full honors and rich offerings on their altar, but also her spatial protection, since Athena grants them a cultic place on the Acropolis, near the Erechteion, promising them offerings and wealth. However, the offer is not very clear yet. Thrice Athena ritually tempts and tames the Erinyes, promising them that they will be honored, admitting that the Furies are old (chased away) deities whom, nevertheless, an Olympian goddess (and not one similar to the others, but precisely the one born from her father’s head, the divine leader of the Olympians) values. Therefore, she wants to convert their mission and their role, adapting them to the new Greek pantheon. From Furies she makes them become exactly the opposite, namely goddesses who are benign to people, solacing, benefic presences; white manna, goddesses of fecundity and wealth. It is a form of captatio benevolentiae that is partially successful, since, in the end, the old Erinyes accept Athena’s pact and religious feast, praising even Zeus and starting thus their first gestures as benefic Eumenides. But, in the economy of the play, the acceptance of the change of their cultic role is sudden and forced, even tendentious. Reconverted, the Eumenides praise Athena who leads them to their new underworld altar, as priestesses with burning torches and animal victims ready to be sacrificed but in the name of good and wealth. This last sequence represents in fact the religious adaptation and the pact between the old and the new gods. But, do the Furies really change their nature? Their underworld altars, the darkness, the secret place, and the sacrifices – all these pertain more to the world of the dead rather than to that of the living. Maybe the old Erinyes are apparently some Eumenides, but it is obvious that their genetic structure (at religious level) has not been modified. This is also underlined by the fact that although Orestes had been acquitted by the Areopagus, he was still harassed for a certain period of time (or at least this is what comes out from Euripides’ texts) by some of the Erinyes who had not changed yet (and probably they never would) into Eumenides.

In Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus, the religious conflict is even more ramified than in The Eumenides, as one can see from the following section. First of all, this text is about a cultic clash between Aphrodite and Artemis, but through two human beings: Phaedra and Hippolytus. The religious polemic is thus clearly outlined from the very beginning: eros versus chastity, lewdness versus ascetism etc. Aphrodite’s representation is ghostlike and dark (Cypris, whose lewd cult included the explicit idea of libidinal madness). The goddess feels defied by Hippolytus, him being Artemis’ fervent worshipper; Aphrodite accuses the young worshipper of a certain anti-Aphrodite sacerdotal hybris. And, indeed, everything indicates that Hippolytus was an Artemisian priest, centered on the cult of hunting, of sport competitions (he is the son of Theseus and of the Amazons’ queen – Hippolyta) and of warlike chastity. Moreover, Hippolytus is not a simple believer, but a frenzied, fanatic, fundamentalist worshipper of Artemis, and this is the nuance that provokes Aphrodite, the goddess considering that her cultic rival is a “comradeship of one too high” for mortal Hippolytus. The sacerdotal information on Hippolytus also indicates the fact he is initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries and in Orphism – and this will be held against him by a representative of the canonic religion, namely by Theseus, Hippolytus’ father. Consequently, the young Artemisian priest is attacked for a cultic issue both by the divine figure of Aphrodite and by the classic, paternal one of Theseus, who is averse to Orphism and rejects the “obscure” cults based on abstinence.

Without being Aphrodite’s representative, and without casting off Artemis, Theseus is merely a representative of the official religion that perceives heresy in Orphism. In fact, this is the major reproach brought to Hippolytus: the young priest is a “heretic”. Neither the presupposed adultery, nor the symbolic parricide will be the main accusation brought by Theseus against Hippolytus, but the son’s affiliation to a cult that repels the father. That is why the son will be punished by the father’s religion in an exemplary manner: Theseus will invoke Poseidon (his divine father and Hippolytus’ divine grandfather) to punitively and exemplarily kill the heretic son and nephew (in brackets one may say that Theseus acts in this manner since he himself cannot punish Hippolytus because he runs the risk of becoming impure, but also because Poseidon belonged to the pantheon of the classic, official gods who had the right to punish the religious “deviants”). Thus, Poseidon appears epiphanically as a bull, frightens the horses harnessed to Hippolytus chariot and acts so that Hippolytus is torn apart by his own chariot. Poseidon emerges as a sea bull, in the punitive position of the official deities; but he represents something else as well – he is the castrating “father” – substitute (grandfather) for the deviant and heretic son (grandson). The latter, in his turn, is presumed of having wanted to symbolically castrate the father (see the presupposed – but false – adultery of Hippolytus and Phaedra); however, the castration is realized through death and not through an actual libidinal gesture.

Only at the end of the play does goddess Artemis come into sight trying tardily to help her fervent priest and disclosing to Theseus the feminine conspiracy (Phaedra’s setup). Artemis’ criticism is directed towards Aphrodite who, striking Hippolytus, intended to eliminate, through a religious “putsch”, her rival who is immune to eros. Dying, but understanding the sense of Artemis’ mystic revelation, Hippolytus declares to be up to the last moment her fervent priest: the hunter, the guardian of the statues and the breeder of her horses, assuming even in the moment of his death the genetic structure of an Artemisian priest. Since she feels wronged by the murdering of her priest, Artemis promises a similar cultic revenge prophesizing the murdering of Adonis, Aphrodite’s lover, by a punitive boar, manipulated by the goddess of hunting.

It is essential that, after Hippolytus’ death, sanctuaries will be built and dedicated to him in Troezen: here the maids will come before the wedding to place braids of hair as offerings. In other words, Hippolytus will be recognized, at least posthumously, as a sacrificed and sanctified priest of Artemis, since his worshippers are exclusively maids. The sense of the hair offerings was linked to the sexual magic power preserved in hair: and, by cutting it and by their transformation into women, after the wedding, the worshipping maids satisfied both Hippolytus’ ardor of yore in cultivating his chastity, but also his fundamental misogyny that accused the women of being impure on account of their sexual statute. According to other sources, more obscure ones, Hippolytus would have been redeemed from death by Asklepios and appointed priest in one of goddess Artemis’ temples.

As for Phaedra and her possible cultic function, the situation is rather complicated here as well. Although Phaedra did not do anything to defy Aphrodite (on the contrary, it comes out that she was a fervent worshipper of the latter, even if she was not a priestess), Cypris decides to punish Hippolytus through his step mother, inculcating in her a blind passion while she was watching Hippolytus getting initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Phaedra is one of Aphrodite’s professional worshippers: she had temples built for the goddess and is loyal to the goddess. Nevertheless, Aphrodite is ready to sacrifice her (Phaedra is just an instrument in the goddess’s hands) in order to undermine her cultic rival, Artemis. Infected by passionate love for Hippolytus (that is why the Chorus perceives her as “frantic”, possessed by Hecate, Pan and Cybele), Phaedra runs the risk, however, to implicitly become a deviant from Aphrodite’s cult when, because of her passion, she feels the need to attend the ceremonies of the Artemisian cult, being even ready (if she could thus seduce Hippolytus) to participate at spear hunting like an Amazon or to watch the athletic contests of taming the wild horses. Knowing who and what she is, Phaedra is nevertheless aware that it is not normal for her to be troubled by deviances and heresies. She comes from a stock of women and queens for whom the cult of the bull was significant: Pasiphae, her mother (the queen of Crete in love with the white bull with whom she conceives the Minotaur – Pasiphae being, probably, a Minoan priestess centered on the Dionysian cult of the bull), then Ariadne, Phaedra’s sister, in love with Theseus whom she helps killing the Minotaur (later on abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, Ariadne is to become Dionysos’ wife, who appears to her as a bull). Phaedra herself is nobody else but Theseus’ wife in love with her step son, whose mother was an Amazon. And all of a sudden, for the mortal punishing of Hippolytus, Poseidon’s bull may have Dionysian connotations as well. Will Phaedra be sacrificed also because Aphrodite feels partially betrayed when, troubled by her incestuous passion, Phaedra is willing to become a worshipper of the Artemisian cult only for Hippolytus’ sake? Present at Phaedra’s torments, the Nurse proclaims Cypris to be an instance “above the gods”, an engine of the cosmic, divine and earthly lives altogether. In their turn, the Chorus praise Eros as the “master and lord of the world”, a terrible god of instincts, a ghost that deserves to be honored at least as much as Apollo is, if not even more, since Eros is the male equivalent of Cypris – the dark, devastating passion. In other words, the Chorus suggest a stratification of the divine instances, a certain hierarchy in which Cypris will be higher ranked than Artemis or Apollo. The end of the tragedy will demonstrate however that Aphrodite uselessly sacrificed Phaedra: after his death, Hippolytus is acknowledged as a complete Artemisian priest. Aphrodite’s religious “putsch” failed even if the Artemisian priest was sacrificed.

One of the most interesting plays from the point of view of a religious polemic is Euripides’ Bacchae, since the Dionysian cult is revealed here in its frenetic-orgiastic side, but also in the violent-dark one. Dionysus is travestied in a bacchant and only at the end of the play will he reveal his divine identity to the other characters. The purpose of his disguise is to present, step by step, the initiation of the spectator (and of the reader) in the Dionysian cult: for the characters of Euripides’ play, Dionysus appears as a bacchant, yet, for the readers, he describes the missionary journey of a god and priest at the same time, wandering through Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor (I’ve set those eastern lands / dancing in the mysteries I established, / making known to men my own divinity”). Dionysus chooses the city of Thebes for a vigorous demonstration of his cult, since he was provoked and offended by his aunts, Semele’s sisters, who considered him a mortal, without a divine lineage (son of Zeus). In order to exemplarily punish the heretic aunts and the Theban women in general (who rejected the Dionysian cult), Dionysus changes them by force into bacchae:

“So I’ve driven those women from their homes / in a frenzy – they now live in the mountains, / out of their minds.  I’ve made them / put on costumes, / outfits appropriate for my mysteries. / All Theban offspring – or, at least, all women – / I’ve driven in a crazed fit from their homes”,

confesses the god demonstratively. However, Dionysus intends to punish especially his cousin Pentheus since this one is strongly opposed to the Dionysian cult, him being very attached to the official cults. In other words, the religious polemic does not take place between the gods, but between a still unofficial god (Dionysus) and the human representative of the other official gods (Pentheus). After the Dionysian religion will be forcibly established in Thebes, Dionysus intends to wander as a missionary through other regions and geographic spaces for the spreading of his cult.

With respect to his divine structure, Dionysus is a complicated god from the genetic-religious viewpoint: he is akin to Cybele (the goddess of fertility and vegetation) and to Rhea (a goddess of mountains), the two goddesses coalesced at a certain point and melted into the Dionysian cult. But Dionysus is also akin to Demeter, as Tiresias explains in the Bacchae, and the Eleusinian Mysteries (since at Eleusis Dionysus was also worshipped as a god who passed, as Zagreus, through death and redemption). He is paradoxically connected even with Apollo, although indirectly: not in vain was there at Delphi a grotto-temple of a Dionysian type (even if he was Apollo’s opposite, Dionysus was honored just because he represented the other extreme). According to Tiresias, Dionysus is akin to Ares, through his bloody-punishing terrible side. According to the Chorus, Dionysus is akin to Aphrodite – as Cypris -, both gods being representatives of the sensorial frenzy. The plethora of Dionysus’ names (Evyos, Dithyrambos, Bromios, Iacchos, Bacchus, Bacchaebacchus, Zagreus) pleads for the multiple nuances of the Dionysian cult. Then, the Dionysian cortege is made up of various secondary divinities such as the nymphs, the satyrs, Pan or Xilen, some of them specialized as vegetal entities, of the revival, others as orgiastic entities, certainly circumscribed to the cult of the wine perceived as a form of Eucharist (liquefied Dionysus) of the god with his fervent worshippers, as Tiresias explains. The Chorus from Euripides’ play also mention Dionysus’ animal, totemic incarnations: bull, serpent, lion – some of them are centered on the fertility and revival symbolism, some others on the punitive and great force symbolism.

As any god who respects himself, Dionysus has fundamentalist and frenetic priests and priestesses: in his case, these are especially the Bacchae. They are of two types: the voluntary ones (the Asians) and the involuntary ones (the Thebans), which indicates again the structure of Janus Bifrons of the god – on the one hand he is a protective deity, and on the other he is a punitive god, of violent death. Dionysus is similar to almost all the other Greek gods: the formula Janus Bifrons is not characteristic only for Dionysus, but also for Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite or Hera – each of these has a solar side that they reveal to the faithful believers, and a gloomy side revealed punitively to the heretic. The Asian Bacchae delineate Dionysus as an exorcizing and liberating god, mystically incarnated in a bull or a serpent (“Appear now to our sight, O Bacchus – / come as a bull or many-headed serpent”). And, when he, on purpose, allows himself to be captured by Pentheus and he is a prisoner in the royal palace, he leaves as surety in his place, when evading, a bull. Moreover, the Bacchae themselves, like their protecting god, have two types of manifestations: on the one hand they breast-feed fawns, are crowned with ivy and oak, change the land into milk and honey, and the water springs into wine; and, on the other, they butcher the herds of bulls, plunder the towns surrounding Thebes and fight savagely like Amazons.

However, what is revealing for the Dionysian cult, in the case of the Bacchae, is, above all, the relation between the god concealed in bacchant and Pentheus the faithless, who, from a certain point on, simultaneously becomes the offering and the priest (the apprentice) of the god that he defies and challenges. Because Pentheus will be sacrificed after a model akin to that of the sacrifice Dionysus-Zagreus (by the Titans), through sparagmos. In fact, Dionysus warns his disciple, who is not even aware of being his disciple, that he does not know what he says, what he does and what he is, the entire play being conceived as a demonstration of “sacrificial lynching” (this is René Girard’s demonstration). Dionysus and Pentheus are one another’s double; but Pentheus’ case is especially ardent in demonstration: he is Dionysus’ religious enemy, but his disciple and priest as well, sacrificed according to the very model of Dionysus’ sacrifice. The god prepares Pentheus’ initiation death, in order to prove his bloody, gloomy side too, not only the classic (vegetal etc.): Dionysus is the god “most fearful and yet most kind to men”. Thus, Pentheus will be initiated in the Dionysian mystique, disguised as a bacchant and perceiving Dionysus as a bull. But, even more important is the fact that Pentheus perceives the difference between the two Thebes: the traditional one (whose exponent was he, himself, until a certain point, as a representative of the official religion) and the Dionysian one (whose exponent he becomes unwillingly in the very moment of his sacrificial death, being torn by his mother, Agave, forcibly changed into a Bacchae). After Pentheus’ death, Dionysus appears (unconcealed) in front of Cadmus and Agave, but he is no longer interested in any mystical revelation, since “You learn too late. You were ignorant / when you should have known.” Pentheus had been taught the lesson of religious cult, and through his initiation and death, the official gods and worshippers were forced to finally accept Dionysus.

Bibliography:

C. Fred Alford, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Greek Tragedy, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1992

Ştefan Borbély, De la Herakles la Eulenspiegel. Eroicul (From Hercules to Eulenspiegel. The Heroic), Cluj, Dacia Publishing House, 2001

E. R. Dodds, Grecii şi iraţionalul (The Greeks and the Irrational), translated by Catrinel Pleşu, with an introduction by Petru Creţia, Iaşi, Polirom Publishing House, 1998

René Girard, Violenţa şi sacrul (The Violence and the Sacred), translated from French by Mona Antohi, Bucureşti, Nemira Publishing House, 1995

René Girard, Ţapul ispăşitor (The Scapegoat), translation (from French) and notes by Theodor Rogin, Bucureşti, Nemira Publishing House, 2000

Erwin Rohde, Psyché, Bucureşti, Meridiane Publishing House, 1985

Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mit şi gândire în Grecia antică. Studii de psihologie istorică (Myth and Thought among the Greeks), translated from French by Zoe Petre and Andrei Niculescu, with an introduction by Zoe Petre, Bucureşti, Meridiane Publishing House, 1995

Jean-Pierre Vernant, Originile gândirii greceşti (Origins of Greek Thought), translated from French by Florica Bechet and Dan Stanciu, with a postface by Zoe Petre, Bucureşti, Symposion Publishing House, 1995.

Hugo Francisco Bauzá

CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

La mitología clásica y su proyección contemporánea

Las Bacantas de Salvador Távora /

Classic Mythology and Its Contemporary Sequels

Salvador Távora’s The Bacchae

Abstract: Salvador Távora, the playwright from Sevilla, revisits Euripides’ well-known play in his work The bacchaes. In order to accommodate the ancient theme to the “flamenco” code, he makes use of the “cante jondo”, one of the Andalusian folk dances, of the ”cantaores” and the ”bailaores”, as well as of other means of the “gipsy aesthetics”. In so doing, Távora updates the classical tragedy to modern times. The main idea remains that humans are subject to powers beyond their reach and comprehension, and the conclusion is that man should remain open to miracles and to mystery.

Keywords: Dionysus; Dionysian festivals; Flemish theatre; Andalusian gypsies.

1. Función y sentido de la mitología y de la religión griegas

“Admiramos las grandes obras de los griegos, su arquitectura, plástica, poesía, filosofía y ciencia. Somos conscientes de que ellos son los fundadores del espíritu europeo (…) leemos a Homero como si hubiese escrito para nosotros, emocionados contemplamos las estatuas y los templos de los dioses griegos (…) pero los dioses mismos, de cuya existencia nos hablan estatuas y santuarios, los dioses cuyo espíritu vibra en toda la poesía de Homero, los dioses glorificados en los cantos de Píndaro, que en las tragedias de Esquilo y Sófocles ponen norma y meta a la existencia humana, ¿realmente ya no nos importan nada? ¿Dónde estará entonces el error, en ellos o en nosotros?”,

plantea Walter Otto con asombrosa lucidez al iniciar su estudio sobre la Theophanía de los dioses griegos.[1]

Este estudioso encara una cuestión que, desde hace siglos, ha tenido -y tiene- diferentes respuestas. De entre las más célebres, no puedo omitir la de su contemporáneo -y contrincante ideológico- Wilamowitz-Möllendorf quien en su notable Der Glaube der Hellenen destaca: “los dioses están ahí”. Por tanto, deben ser aceptados como tales siendo superflua toda reflexión teórica al respecto. Aceptarlos, es ése el principio mediante el cual debemos proceder toda vez que pretendamos ingresar en el horizonte helénico. Ni explicarlos, ni discutirlos, sólo aceptar su sempiterna presencia.

Es preciso dejar de lado los prejuicios racionalistas que, desde Sócrates hasta nuestros días, han pretendido mirar críticamente la mitología y religión griegas y con lo cual han procurado asestarle un golpe de gracia. La mitología y la religión no pueden ser aprehendidas por medio de la razón, sino mediante un acto de fe, de adhesión sentimental. En los últimos años Paul Veyne, en un lúcido ensayo[2], se pregunta si los griegos creyeron o no en sus dioses, a lo que responde indicando que jamás se formularon esa pregunta: una interrogación de ese tipo pertenece al mundo racionalista de la modernidad y no al helenismo de la época clásica.

Conviene tener presente que la mitología clásica está constituida por un conjunto de relatos que, entre otras circunstancias, pone en evidencia la manera como un pueblo experimentó lo divino, así como sus inquietudes respecto del más allá. Al considerar esta mitología debemos abandonar, en consecuencia, la idea ingenua que veía en ella sólo la noción de aventura, en la que los dioses -calcados sobre los mortales- tenían los mismos vicios y virtudes que éstos: por dioses los griegos entendieron algo más que mera mitografía.

Los mitos clásicos pretenden brindarnos una visión teocosmogónica del mundo y de la historia, así como la ubicación y el papel del hombre en ese complejo tejido cuyos hilos considera urdidos de antemano y que conforman un tramado fatal e ineluctable que lo envuelve; de ahí el anhelo por desentrañar lo establecido por el Destino, por conocer la moîra, la parte asignada a cada uno[3].

Dentro de ese vasto corpus, una de las figuras clave es Dioniso. Sobre esta deidad la bibliografía, que es vastísima, se despliega en un horizonte exegético que va desde considerarlo una deidad foránea que penetró e influyó decisivamente en el pensamiento griego, hasta trabajos como los del citado W. Otto quien, siguiendo el relato euripideo de las Bacantes, lo entiende como un dios griego -lo que ha sido corroborado por el hallazgo de tablillas micénicas que se remontan al II milenio antes de Cristo, en dos de las cuales está consignado el nombre de esta deidad-.

Con todo, es prudente adoptar una postura conciliadora de ambas exégesis dado que, si bien es una deidad griega, Dioniso es reconocido plenamente como dios en la comunidad helénica luego de la sanación de su locura y de su iniciación en Tracia por obra de Rhea, su abuela, y de la diosa Cibeles.

Por lo demás, desde Nietzsche -que en Die Geburt der Tragödie lo sitúa en el panteón helénico como una deidad complementaria de Apolo- su figura no ha dejado de ser motivo de análisis, comentarios y exégesis harto variados. Existe, pues, una hermenéutica sobre Dioniso al extremo de que una reciente tesis doctoral defendida en España ha versado sobre la historiografía de esta deidad[4].

Ha sido mérito de Nietzsche develar aspectos singulares de esta figura mítica los que hoy englobamos corrientemente bajo el nombre “dionisíacos”. En ese sentido, es este filósofo quien ha puesto al descubierto rasgos fundamentales muchos de los cuales no parecen pertenecer propiamente al ámbito que los griegos atribuyeron en sus orígenes a esta deidad sino, antes bien, otros que pueden ser colectadas en la historiografía que a lo largo del tiempo se ha construido sobre Dioniso. Así, por ejemplo, la idea que se trata de un dios desestabilizador, impulsivo, provocador del caos y de otras situaciones inquietantes; aun cuando éstas se aprecian ya en las Bacantes de Eurípides, parecen vigorizarse con resemantizaciones posteriores. Empero, en toda hermenéutica del dios, está siempre latente su condición liberadora con que se lo conoce desde el mundo helénico; lyaîos ‘liberador’ lo llaman Anacretonte (VI 8, 24) y Nonno (IX 18).

Lo que puede verse en el citado ejemplo dionisíaco, como en todo lo que compete a la mitología y religión griegas, tiene que ver con la manera como éstas son actualizadas mediante relecturas, exégesis y resemantizaciones diversas. Esas nuevas perspectivas ponen de relieve una actitud crítica –siempre renovada- que es uno de las notas fundamentales que el mundo occidental ha recogido como herencia del helenismo.

De entre las numerosas recreaciones de la figura de esta deidad, paso a detenerme en el uso que de ella hace el teatrista andaluz Salvador Távora en su versión -en lectura flamenca- de Las Bacantes de Eurípides: se trata del trasvasamaiento de un texto literario a un registro dramático expresado de manera popular.

2. La poética de Távora y su apuesta por el flamenco

La cultura flamenca surgió -y se dasarrolló- en el Mediterráneo español, concretamente en Andalucía, integrada por Granada, Córdoba y Sevilla. Nació como propia de los gitanos aun cuando se advierten en ella aportes indios, judíos e, incluso, visigodos. Esta cultura se desarrolló, a lo largo de siglos, en forma oral (la mayor parte de los gitanos han sido -y aún hoy siguen siendo- analfabetos), también de manera marginal y, en ocasiones, clandestina. Empero, merced a la difusión del folklore -debida principalmente al turismo- y de una progresiva aceptación de la diversidad, el flamenco ha ganado numerosos adeptos en los últimos decenios.

Por otra parte, diversas migraciones llegadas hasta Cádiz (sur de la península ibérica) dan cuenta de haber llevado hasta esa comarca cultos griegos, así sucedió con el de Heracles -el Hércules romano- cuyas columnas estaban situadas a ambos lados del estrecho de Gibraltar y, ciertamente, con el de Dioniso. A este último se lo advierte, por ejemplo, en la iconografía que decora diversas ánforas halladas en lo que hoy es Andalucía y que evoca al dios liberador, lo que informa sobre la difusión de su mito en esa comarca en plena antigüedad clásica. Existen, por lo demás, testimonios que dan cuenta de que las bailarinas de Gades (antigua denominación de Cádiz) eran famosas como “hábiles seductoras y artistas imprescindibles en todos los banquetes licenciosos”[5], lo que permite aclimatar con más énfasis lo dionisíaco, al menos en lo que compete al menadismo.

En cuanto a S. Távora, se trata de un teatrista de origen humilde que se inició en el mundo de una dramaturgia sui generis como puede serlo la tauromaquia. Lo hizo como novillero en la cuadrilla de Salvador Guardia hasta que a este rajoneador, en una lid, un toro lo embistió mortalmente por lo que Távora se apartó de manera definitiva de esos menesteres; más tarde, peregrinó como cantaor por diversos pueblos del sur de España, hasta convertirse en director teatral. En el volumen La imaginación herida, compilado por tres de sus colaboradores,[6] no sólo brinda su itinerario biográfico, sino que también delinea las líneas vertebrales de su poética. Advertimos en él que el punto de inflexión fue el año 1971 cuando José Monleón lo invitó a hacerse cargo de las letras y de la interpretación de Oratorio, obra que fue presentada en el “Festival Mundial de Teatro” de Nancy y donde obtuvo éxito resonante, tal como destaqué en otro sitio[7]. Desde entonces Távora se viene abocando de manera exclusiva al arte dramático, trabajándolo en tono popular y virtiéndolo en registro flamenco; en cuanto a este registro pone énfasis en que ha sido gracias al flamenco como la cultura andaluza logró acentuar su sesgo trágico.

Su compañía teatral -“La cuadra de Sevilla”- no es un simple grupo folklórico que se apoya en conocidos clisés de Andalucía -el zapateo y el cante for export-, sino una compañía fiel a determinado planteamiento estético y con fuerte compromiso social: su propósito apunta a que el teatro retorne a lo popular y sin que por ello pierda jerarquía artística.

Su dramaturgia no está concebida en un espacio “a la italiana”, sino situada en la plaza, a la que asiste gran número de espectadores; por esa causa muchos le han cuestionado el uso de un término consagrado -“teatro”-, cuando en rigor, más que de un “teatro”, parece tratarse de un ritual o, en todo caso, de un espectáculo escénico. Frente a esas objeciones este director ha reaccionado refiriendo que el teatro no debe quedarse “en la mojigatería de la intimidad”, sino que, a través de grandes espectáculos -como fue el caso de la tragedia griega- debe llegar a enormes masas, pudiendo conmover a todos y a cada uno de los espectadores, fundándose en el mismo principio de empátheia que da fundamento ontológico al teatro griego. Con ello propone un teatro con una proyección mayúscula, hoy sólo comparable a la que pueden brindarnos el cine, la televisión u otras representaciones masivas -vgr. ciertas competiciones deportivas-.

Ese sentido multitudinario del espectáculo representado en un espacio abierto, recuerda las plazas de toros -que pueden dar cabida hasta a más de diez mil personas- y que Távora conoció desde su infancia, del mismo modo como recuerda los teatros de Grecia, así el de Epidauro, en la Argólide, que aún hoy se utiliza con sus dieciséis mil sitios para espectadores. También se aprecian similitudes entre el primitivo teatro griego y el de Távora en cuanto a aspectos parateatrales.

De igual modo, así como la escena griega, en un primer momento, estuvo consagrada al ritual dionisíaco, también el de Távora pretende recuperar formas rituales del pueblo andaluz mediante el cante y ciertas formas tanto musicales cuanto de baile. En lo que atañe al cante, lo utilizó no porque se trate de un medio virtuoso de comunicación, sino porque es la manera natural con la que se expresa un determinado sector social de Andalucía: los gitanos.

A sus espectáculos multitudinarios asisten diferentes clases sociales y éstas, al encontrarse reunidas en círculo, además de participar del encuentro “piel a piel” del que habla el maestro andaluz, tienen todas idénticas posibilidades de experimentar conmiseración frente a lo que sucede en escena: el teatro es así un lugar de encuentro. Según este ideario estético no se concibe al público como un espectador pasivo sino que, por el contrario, se lo hace partícipe “de que la violencia escénica que puede haber, también es una violencia que a él le atañe, que todas las historias escénicas son historias que deben preocupar y conmover también al espectador”[8], con lo que hace propio, en otros términos, el efecto catártico del que habla Aristóteles en su Poética.

Para Távora el teatro es un arte por lo que no puede ser explicado de manera racional. Sus espectáculos, aliterarios, son una forma de entender la vida y la muerte según la siente el medio cultural andaluz, donde grandeza y miseria, siempre ensamblados, son captados en todos los casos en situación agónica.

Sorprende que a un creador preocupado por lo popular, como es el caso de Távora, haya podido interesarle un texto clásico como la citada tragedia de Eurípides. El punto que lo religa a esa pieza tiene que ver con una problemática que atañe al hombre y la manera como lo divino puede hacerse patente a lo humano, tanto en sus aspectos sublimes, cuanto en los terribles. Por lo demás, el planteo euripideo trasciende una mera historia tebana para inscribirse en el dominio de lo universal; de ella este teatrista se apropia para proyectarla desde su Andalucía natal.

3. Dioniso en la lectura dramática de Távora

En cuanto a la reescritura de la pieza de Eurípides, Távora la sigue en sus líneas fundamentales con la sola excepción de que la expresa con los códigos y recursos de la cultura flamenca; así, por ejemplo, el coro está en manos de gitanas y la música, obviamente, también.

El dios conserva su condición migratoria, a la vez que su situación de extranjero lo vuelve extraño. Es artífice de la embriaguez, benéfico y terrible a un mismo tiempo, ciertamente, epidémico,[9] y capaz de provocar manía -‘locura’- en quienes osan rechazar su condición de deidad. Por lo demás, es liberador en el sentido pleno de la palabra y, por tanto, no entiende de límites.

La puesta de Távora se inicia cuando la mujer que oficia de corifeo abre el grifo del tonel dejando correr agua (=vino) el que vuelve a cerrar cuando ha concluido la tragedia. Se trata de una metáfora que alude a la posesión mediante el beber ese néctar que no es otra cosa que la esencia del dios: mientras fluye el vino, fluyen la posesión, la locura.

En cuanto a los personajes y situaciones, son las mismas que en Eurípides, salvo las integrantes del coro, gitanas en este caso. El componente flamenco con que resignifica la pieza se advierte en el zapateo acompañado de palmas, danzas y cante vertido éste al son de tambores y otros instrumentos de la cultura flamenca.

Un detalle escénico innovador es una noria que gira ininterrumpidamente durante la puesta y a la cual queda prendido el coro de bacantes: una metáfora de la alienación, una “representación alegórica de las bacanales”[10]. Son las ménades que, prendidas mediante arneses a cada una de las astas del molino, giran presas de la posesión dionisíaca.

La corifeo, en su papel de prologuista, narra el mito de Dioniso; por otra parte ella misma, el coro y el propio Dios son los encargados de introducir la nueva fuerza que dinamizará el mundo y a la que el rey Penteo opone resistencia por temor a que el orden de la ciudad se desestabilice. Entretanto, las cinco mujeres que componen el coro, el incesante zapateo que ejecutan y el tamboril que ritma sus pasos acelerados provocan vértigo, mas, cuando no danzan, sus tirsos al golpear la tierra dan también cuenta de ese estado de posesión. Entre otros recursos de naturaleza semiótica, el cabello suelto de las muchachas del coro juega un papel destacado que se hace más evidente cuando Ágave, al caer posesa, desata su cabellera.

Un personaje clave de la recreación de Távora es Dioniso. Este bailaor, cuyos movimientos escénicos deslumbran, no articula palabra en toda la representación, pero su sonrisa, maliciosa y cautivante a un mismo tiempo, parece prenunciar algo ominoso. Un rasgo clave de su dýnamis lo constituye su flauta con la que “entusiasma” a Penteo hasta que éste, víctima de incantamentum, se entrega.

Cadmo, el adivino Tiresias y Ágave, también posesos, terminan rindiendo culto a esta extraña deidad. Cadmo, encarnado en la figura de un cantaor entrelaza su propia desdicha con el dolor que expresa el cante jondo. Tiresias, con su ropaje cándido –candidus en la antigüedad era la forma en la que los dioses hacían su hierofanta- se mueve en escena como un fantasma que parece sugerir un fin aciago. En cuanto a Ágave, prorrumpiendo gritos lastimeros, pasa, merced a la persuasión de su padre, de la enajenación a la cordura, en una escena que tiene innegables ribetes psicoanalíticos.

En cuanto a dos aspectos clave de los que es víctima Penteo, como son el sparagmós ‘desmembramiento ritual de la víctima’ y la omophagía ‘acción de ingerir carne cruda’, Távora los resuelve mediante un recurso extremo. Respecto del primero, sigue la línea tradicional ya que lo pone en manos de las ménades; respecto de la omophagía innova: aquí es un enorme mastín que, traído por el propio Dioniso, acaba con lo que restaba del malhadado Penteo.

Si bien en esta pieza Távora no parece responder a los códigos de su propia poética -ya que sus Bacantes no es una obra propiamente popular, en tanto tiene un trasfondo literario que es menester conocer para su cabal entendimiento- reelabora la pieza euripidea poniendo énfasis en los aspectos universales que el dramaturgo griego pretendió imprimir a sus Bacantes: la conciencia de que existen fuerzas que se yerguen por encima del hombre, la imposibilidad de oponerles resistencia, la aceptación de lo foráneo y, por sobre todo, mostrarse abierto ante la irrupción maravillosa de las hierofanías.