The strengths of metaphor

EUGENE KAELLIS

Every period in human history displays its own conceit – and rightfully so. In each century, historians ideally assess and reassess views based on archeological findings and newly discovered documents, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. In our time, as an example, historians are still debating the causes of such events as the fall of the Roman Empire, with one recent theory attributing its decline to the drinking of (acidic) wines from lead goblets, the absorption of the lead salts causing diminishing vigor, sexual potency and fertility.

Integral to this process are the continually changing biases of contemporary historians. The American Civil War has only recently been subjected to an economic analysis demonstrating that slavery and its extension to western territories was but one of the many economic issues separating the North from the South. People were not going to engage in a long and bloody conflict over slavery and its extension, certainly not over tariffs. So, “Preservation of the Union” became the rallying cry, as Stalin’s “Great Patriotic War” became the rallying cry of the Soviet Motherland rather than the defence of communism, for which few were willing to die. As the well-known, perhaps somewhat cynical, statement goes: all history is contemporary history. Cultural interpretations are often slow in coming though. Has it not occurred to today’s economists, for example, that Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland – all suffering extreme financial “embarrassment” due to over-spending and under-working – have no history of the Reformation, hence the “Protestant work ethic” (Max Weber) and all that?

At the heart of Jewish (and Christian) tradition is, of course, the Bible, based on the highly religio-cultural-centric views of the Hebrew scribes and the Gospel writers, in most cases putting ink to paper long after the (alleged) events they describe and, consequently, subjecting them to an ex post facto interpretation, which includes deciding what should be written and, later and more important, what should be canonized. How many Christians, for example, familiar with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, have ever read the (un-canonized) Gospel of Thomas? Moreover, if one places the Gospels in chronological order, they become evidently more anti-Judaic and increasingly pro-Roman over time. Decisions about what was to be preserved and canonized were made, in both Judaism and Christianity, by councils convened for that very purpose and the decisions were often hotly debated.

How credible biblical writing is depends, of course, on contemporaneous outlook. Its cosmology is evidently a product of religious imagination, as are the miracles recounted, some of which can now be seen to have a naturalistic explanation. There are rational explanations, for example, of the Ten Plagues of Exodus.

There are ways to interpret Scripture that are acceptable even to people who are not religious and, when uncovered, are cause for wonderment that even “primitive” people understood the metaphoric nature of Scripture.

For example, after Cain kills Abel, he is marked by God, but not punished. Moreover, it is Cain and his descendants who are credited with founding a city, making music and using technology, the fundamentals of civilization – urbanization, culture and industry. The Bible is telling us that, with the advent of human intelligence, rivalry can no longer be settled, as in the rest of the Animal Kingdom, by beating a rival. Among animals, usually (not always) the loser will recognize his defeat and slink away, but even a small, weak human, by devising schemes, can kill a larger, stronger one; hence, the only way to settle a rivalry permanently is by murder.

To carry through with this approach, when looked at historically, many Jewish ritual ordinances could be seen as simply contra-Egyptian. Several examples follow:

The prohibition against eating pork was not in consideration of avoiding trichinosis (about which nothing was known), as some ex post facto explanations would have it, it was a reaction to the orgiastic Dionysian celebrations of the Egyptians in which pork figured prominently; moreover, in a frenzy sometimes from still-living animals, hence, the injunction against eating flesh with its “life,” meaning “blood” (Genesis 9:4). The injunction against mixing milk and meat is a rabbinic interpretation of an interdiction against “seething a kid in its mother’s milk,” considered so important that it appears three times in the Torah – this likely relates to a widespread pagan autumnal practice that was thought to assure the resurrection of the earth’s fertility in the spring. The growing of sideburns (peyot) among Orthodox Jewish men is almost certainly a reaction to the tonsure of Egyptian priests, to a certain degree mimicked by medieval monks. The prohibition against mixing certain natural fibres is, again probably, a reaction to the vestments of Egyptian priests. The prohibition forbidding kohanim to enter a cemetery is likely a reaction to the cult of the dead, which played such a prominent role in Egyptian life. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the eating of matzah during Passover is almost certainly not a reenactment of the exigent rapidity of the flight from Egypt, but rather one more “anti-Egyptian” ordinance, since it was Egyptians who first discovered leavening and used it to make beer and lighter bread.

One could go on and on. The point of all this is that the Bible can be and should be subjected to contemporary interpretation, otherwise the narrative becomes a series of tales that have the charm of fairy stories but lack credibility. When the metaphoric and poetic quality of Scripture is examined, it does not detract from its validity; indeed, it adds to it.

This idea applies even to science, where scientists are always dealing with metaphors. The Bohr model of the atom was evidently naïve, yet it cannot be cast aside completely. String theory, now so prominent in subatomic physics, can be traced back to Pythagoras! The truth is infinite in its extent, variety and apprehension. Each age views it and interprets it according to its predilections. It took centuries to arrive at a (partial) solution to the two contending theories of light – Huyghens’ and Newton’s – now more or less reconciled in de Broglie.

We are always and unavoidably dealing with metaphors. Once we accept that, we can appreciate the impossibility of “knowing God” through “His” creation or by revelation. We can know “Him” only through a spiritual resonance, and Judaism is better equipped than other contemporaneous religions to evolve in that direction. That evolvement ought to be encouraged, as pursuing it, will lead to greater acceptability and greater, not lesser, adherence.

Eugene Kaellis has written Making Jews, on the theme of the current basic problem of Diaspora Jewry, which is available from lulu.com.

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