Three text-interpreters, followed by a commentator, went into
Scripture's garden. One tried to repair the roots. Of her, it is said:
"A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it
is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like
the master."[1] One did not
read. Of him, it is recited: "The righteous will be amid gardens and
fountains of clear-flowing water. Their greeting will be: 'Enter ye here
in peace and security'."[2]
One sought the deep meaning. Of him, it was written: "[...] my heart
stands in awe of your words. I rejoice at your word like one who finds
great spoil."[3] All came
out, save the commentator, who remained, weeping. Of him, nothing is
said, but this writing remains.
I look forward to re-engaging in our common labor.
"... before it is ready!": A Post-Meeting Commentary
Three text-interpreters, followed by a commentator, went into
Scripture's garden. One tried to repair the roots. Of her, it is said:
"A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it
is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like
the master." One did not read. Of him, it is recited: "The righteous
will be amid gardens and fountains of clear-flowing water. Their
greeting will be: 'Enter ye here in peace and security'." One sought the
deep meaning. Of him, it was written: "[...] my heart stands in awe of
your words. I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil." All
came out, save the commentator, who remained, weeping. Of him, nothing
is said, but this writing remains.[1]
Repetition is not merely a stratagem, a ploy to distract from a
larger, hidden purpose. When it occurs, repetition, in itself, signifies
neither a weakening of the sociality of a community, nor a strengthening
of the mechanisms of repression (whether internal or external in origin
and direction), though either or both might obtain in any given
instance.[2] Instead,
repetition signals a basic openness to past and future richness in the
present, a fundamental trust in the unplumbed depths of a given reality.
Among others, repetition is the ground upon which such institutions as
marriage and the state are built, precisely because they are
oriented towards the ordering of shared tasks and hopes. In terms of SR,
repetition derives from an openness to the textuality of texts, in
particular our Scriptures, and it is on the borders of the fields of the
common labor of interpreting those texts that we gather. Ours is
indelibly a communal practice, then, which cannot but intend —
now in lesser, now in greater ways — to effect an increase in the
joy of shared effort and rest.
Given all this, why would a commentator, one who follows after,
having been given such fertile material by such text-interpreters as
Davis, Safi, and Goshen-Gottstein choose to remain in Scripture's
garden? And why would he shed tears there? Not, most emphatically, from
either surfeit of material or dearth of insight on offer. No, the tears
spring from a fountain with two sources: (1) revelation and (2)
desire.[3] How this might be
is suggested by looking at two passages from the Gospel According to
John.
In the New Testament, the word usually translated "garden"
(kepos) appears only five times, once in Luke's Gospel,[4] but four times in John's
(18:1 and 26, twice in 19:41). The first appearance occurs after the
"farewell discourses" between Jesus and his disciples, and no doubt is
the reason for people referring to Gethsemane — which is not
named explicitly by John — as a "garden".[5] It is in this place that Judas hands
Jesus over to soldiers, after Jesus had twice inquired of them, "Whom
are you looking for?" [and the soldiers had fallen on the ground before
him; only John has this act in his account]; but not before Peter had
drawn a sword and wounded a slave of the High Priest. The second
occurrence is later in the chapter, where Peter and "another disciple"
follow Jesus to the High Priest's home, where Jesus had been taken for
interrogation. Because the other disciple was acquainted with the High
Priest, he was admitted, but Peter "was standing outside the gate",
until the other disciple spoke to a woman servant and had him brought in
as well. The woman, and then others, ask Peter if he, too, was a
disciple of Jesus, which he denied each time — as Jesus had
predicted. The last of Peter's questioners, however, "a relative of the
man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, 'Did I not see you in the garden
with him?'" John's account of this three-fold denial, unlike the other
Gospels', does not present Peter as then leaving his interrogators and
"weeping bitterly" after the fulfilment of the prediction.[6] Only the bare fact of its fulfilment is
recorded.
The double appearance of "garden" in 19:41 occurs after Jesus'
crucifixion and death, and refers to the place he was buried by Joseph
of Arimathea and Nicodemus. The significance of this setting is
manifold, and self-imbricating, but two aspects will be noted here. The
first is that this is the locus of that oddest of days in the Christian
understanding of history, "Holy Saturday", the day when the Word is
silent and all seems irretrievably lost.[7] That Jesus "rests" in this garden is the
profoundest moment in Christian Scripture. So much so, in fact, that,
alone among the events recounted in the Gospels, the Resurrection
included, it could not be narrated in any way whatsoever.[8] Then, following this caesura, John has
Mary Magdalene "[come] to the tomb and [see] that the stone had been
removed" (20:1), whereupon she runs to the other disciples and informs
them, "They have taken the Lord [kurion] out of the tomb, and we
do not know where they have laid him" (20:2). The next eight verses have
Peter and another disciple race to the tomb, confirm its emptiness, and
then return "to their homes" (20:10). "But Mary stood weeping outside
the tomb. As she wept [. . .] she turned around and saw Jesus standing
there, but she did not know it was Jesus. He said to her, 'Woman, why
are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?' Supposing him to be the
gardener, she said to him, 'Sir [kurie], if you have carried him
away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.' Jesus
said to her, 'Mary!' She turned and said to him in [Aramaic],
'Rabbouni!' (20:11, 14-16)"
The parallels in the above accounts are obvious, with scenes of
betrayal and denial offset by scenes of resurrection and recognition. In
both sets, however, it is the garden of Scripture into which the central
characters must go, where that which was foretold must come to pass, and
where the nearly intractable work of repentance is begun. This is the
"source" of revelation, the first "spring" of tears.[9] As such, tears do flow, since the
hard work of repairing that which is broken, fractured, or out of joint
cannot be accomplished by rationality alone. Indeed, as
psychoanalysis has been demonstrating since its inception — not
always reflexively — the inner-workings of Reason may,
themselves, be significant factors in sustaining the broken ties between
God and creatures, just as they may be of those within the creation
itself.[10] Revelation,
then, far from being an anaesthetic of infinite efficacy, can and often
does result, contrary to much "popular" rhetoric in religious discourse
(at least in North America), in an increase of suffering. This
suggests a way of "reading" the figure of Mary Magdalene weeping in the
garden: she, along with the "balancing" figure of Peter in the
sequence, represents Reason, which, deprived of its anchors in the
practices of everyday life — as she had been, first by Jesus's
death and burial (John 19:25), and then by his disappearance from the
tomb, thus abrogating her opportunity to mourn, to attain some
(rational) distance from the trauma — must undergo the process of
re-establishing itself in the environment, in the exchanges and
performances of a daily life apparently unaffected by her loss (or the
loss of others). Stated differently, this is another way of presenting
the difficulties of the day between death and resurrection which does
not fall into the dangers courted in Matthew's account. If Reason cannot
in some way compensate for this stress, if it cannot staunch the flow of
tears, or, worst of all, if it stubbornly denies the problem, Reason is
in danger of succumbing to any number of severe dis-orders, to which the
terms "neurosis" and "psychosis" are appropriately applied, and which
nearly always involve some form of violence, whether directed
internally or externally.[11] In Mourning Becomes the Law,
Gillian Rose poignantly captured this situation in relation to the
political ethics of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Max Weber (each of whom
deserves a place at SR's table): "In this vigilance to violence in its
toils with virtue, reason is crying: reason sheds uncontrollable
tears at the pain of rearranging its resources; at the pain of enlarging
as well as curtailing its limits."[12] The often torturous interactions
between Reason and Revelation find their proper and most hopeful locus
of shared work here, in Scripture's Garden. That, alone, justified
following the interpreters into it — which accounts for the (very
free) appropriation and repetition of the story from the Babylonian
Talmud (Hagigah) which opened both the previous writing and this
one.
But if entering is justified — and so perhaps is also
justification, since it proceeds on risking the trustworthiness,
both of those who lead, and of that into which they lead — can
the same be said for remaining, for refusing to exit the garden at the
conclusion of interpretation? (For all interpretations have an end, even
if the practice of interpretation does not.) No, because that is an act
of the second "source" of tears: desire. How this might be true should
be fairly clear from the above, but there is one aspect which should be
made explicit here: Peter and Mary Magdalene, figurations of Reason,
also illuminate its sexuate character. Thus far, this aspect of
reasoning has been largely neglected in SR, a lacuna perhaps now
receiving more attention. If it is to do so, however, another aspect of
human being will also have to be (re-)engaged: the "abyss" within the
self, the site of non-identity, of "The Real" ("Réel" in
Lacan's calculus) which is itself the "source" of desire. Much
contemporary religious and philosophical thought, out of a
well-intentioned but coarse wish to promote "healing", has sought to
overturn what it perceives, not without good cause, as the legacy of the
Cartesian-Kantian insistence on the abyss within the self. Often this is
mis-read in terms of an "abysmal self", which can only seek to consume,
vainly attempting to assuage the longing it feels through pouring one
thing after another into itself, thereby destroying all possibility for
genuine community. Naturally, this results in the failure properly to
recognize anyone, self or other, and so precipitates again the neuroses
and psychoses mentioned above. Desire, however, properly understood,
requires such a self, divided, not against, but within its very
being, willfully resistant to any easy healing, appealing in
every venue for the ones who will find within themselves the capacity
for sociality, for indwelling, for love.[13] To speak poetically for once: "A voice
is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for
her children; she refuses to be comforted [. . .] Keep your voice from
weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your
work."[14]
How all of this is relevant to the Song of Songs, and to the three
interpretations offered, has been wondrously suggested, though in very
different style, by Chad Pecknold in his
commentary. Rather than simply echo him, I shall only offer a few, very
brief considerations of the Septuagint's (LXX) translation of Song 4:12,
which I believe to be extraordinarily fruitful for a gathering of
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers.[15]
"A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain
sealed." (Kepos kekleismenos adelphe mou numphe, kepos kekleismenos,
pege esphragismene.) (Song 4:12) In the first eight verses of
chapter four, the bridegroom has been extolling the bride's physical
beauty by using a nearly bewildering array of metaphors. In verse nine,
however, he introduces a note of incompleteness, saying that she has
"ravished [his] heart [. . .] with a glance of [her] eyes, with one
jewel of [her] necklace" (Ekardiosas hemas heni apo ophthalmon sou,
en mia enthemati trachelon sou). In the succeeding two verses, the
bridegroom heightens this sense of incompleteness, of deep reserve on
the bride's part, by asserting that it is her love, rather than her
sheer physicality, which is better than wine and spice. Interestingly,
where the NRSV has "love", the LXX has mastoi, literally
"breasts", which would seem merely to continue the preceding string of
metaphors. But, mastoi was also used to refer to "round hills"
— which would still continue the string of metaphors —
and, as a transferred meaning, pieces of cotton attached to the edges of
nets. I would suggest that this meaning is not insignificant to the
present use, since the descriptions following increase the sense of
frustration at the distance between bride and bridegroom. While the
bride's sheer beauty, her outward appearance, in other words, is indeed
"better . . . than wine" and her "fragrance . . . than any spice" (v.
10), and though her "lips distill nectar; honey and milk are under [her]
tongue; [and] the scent of [her] garments is like the scent of Lebanon,"
(v. 11) still there is a barrier to be overcome: "A garden locked is my
sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed."
Obviously, the literal meaning refers to the delay at sexual union,
and the bundling of imagery is meant to conduce to awakening sexual
desire in the bride.[16]
But, as Pecknold has rightly noted, the readers of this text are not
voyeurs, not merely satisfying basic, physical desires in a spuriously
vicarious manner. That this is the case is suggested by the use of the
word kepos in v. 12, which, besides meaning "garden" or
"orchard", also denotes "plantation", cultivation on a grand scale. It
was even used to refer to the enclosure where the Olympic Games were
held, and thus carries an explicitly public, perhaps even
liturgical, quality. Despite the intensely private character of
the love extolled, linked as it is with the characteristics of two
individuals, to read this text is not an exercise in voyeurism because,
somehow, the cajoling openness of the bridegroom and the stubbornly
chaste reticence of the bride are publically expressed, open signs to
the world of a reality more than sexual, though not thereby less than
that. This understanding is deepened through the use of the word
pege, "fountain". For if the bride's reticence is hindering the
growth of love between herself and the bridegroom, it is also thereby
robbing all areas of their common life of the expansive richness
possible within it. Pege, like its Latin cognate fons,
can also mean "source", and carries, in conjunction with clarificatory
substantives, transferred meanings of "hearing", "speaking", and
"seeing" — i.e., the eye is the "source" of seeing, the ear of
hearing, etc. The self-enclosedness of the bride, then, rather
than being a virtue to admire and assist, as simple chastity would be,
is shown rather to diminish her capabilities, and, by extension, the
capacities of their relationship. This too, is a public plight,
since hearing, speaking, and seeing, though done by individuals, are
irreducibly inter-subjective activities, ones rooted in and
creative of language. At the heart of this non-, even
anti-voyeuristic text, so luxuriant in its use of language, lies a claim
— obliquely made, to be sure — that human love cannot be
prised apart from its linguistic moorings, and all that they entail, and
it is this rootedness, this anchoring within the realm of exchanges
which suggests that the profligacy exhibited in this text stems from a
source far in excess of the sociality which conditions its immediate
expression. As with the examination above of desire (the second
"source") this excess signifies an "abyss" within the network of social
exchanges, a "space" which cannot be filled by the "products" of those
activities. It suggests, in other words, that to read this text as
Scripture is to think with it about the nature of the One Who gives the
capacity for language, and Who cajoles us into ever-expanding
understandings of the possibilities therein. For Christians, and perhaps
not only for Christians, this is amply demonstrated by considering the
use of the word within the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to
John.[17]
The danger of reading this Scripture, then, lies in the double-edged
fact that it not only appeals to our basest instincts, those most
susceptible of unrighteous manipulation and limiting self-management,
and that it does so in an irreducibly public (communal!) arena, but also
that the locus of salvation, of mutual indwelling of God and humans,
rightly understood and practiced,[18] is located there as well.
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!" (Song 1: 2)
Notes
[1] For the references to
the Scriptures quoted here, see the first three notes
in the companion piece in this issue: "Do not stir up or awaken
love..."
[2] Something of a lively
discussion could be had at this point with Catherine Pickstock,
especially around the arguments in her After Writing. Those
familiar with this piece will sense how my conceptions differ
significantly from hers.
An equally lively conversation could be held around the implications
of the film The Matrix, where the experience of
déjà vu cannot but signify the manipulation of the
presentation of reality by those in positions of power, always to a
repressive end.
[3] Suspicions that this
is merely a semi-novel reworking of Liberal theory, deriving from (among
others) Hobbes and Locke and trading on a similar public-private
bifurcation in a theological context will, one hopes, be allayed by the
following paragraphs. Astute readers concerned with issues cognate to
mine, moreover, may notice that this formulation draws heavily on the
work of Karl Barth — which should lead them to question anew his
relationship(s) to his Liberal (Protestant) inheritance.
[4] Luke 13:19: "'It [the
kingdom of God] is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in
the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the of the air
made nests in its branches.'"
[5] The name means "oil
press", and probably refers to an olive grove. The conflation is not
inappropriate, since kepos can also mean "orchard".
[6] Cf.: Matthew
26:75, Mark 14:72, Luke 22:62.
[7] The earliest example
of this difficulty to "write" Holy Saturday is found in 1 Corinthians
15:3-4, where Paul claims that Jesus' death and resurrection were
"according to the Scriptures" (kata tas graphas), but cannot make
the same claim for his burial, which fact is nevertheless also of "first
importance" (en protois, v. 3). Obviously, I do not see this
verse as evincing a merely rhetorical ploy, but rather a kind of
"balancing" very much like the figures of Peter and Mary Magdalene, as
will be sketched.
Until recently, by far the best contemporary exposition of the issues
surrounding this central day of the Christian Triduum was Hans
Urs von Balthasar's Mysterium Paschale. With the appearance of
Alan Lewis' (posthumous) Between Cross and Resurrection, however,
the depths of the reality of Holy Saturday have been more resonantly
traced across much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century theology. The
matter, however, has much yet to offer.
[8] Cf., Matthew
28:1-10. Matthew 27:62-66 is no counter-example, though it is deeply
problematic for SR, since it presents "the chief priests and the
Pharisees" as violating the Sabbath in order to preserve their
positions. In a way, then, this is a way of presenting the world in
which the light of the Logos, to use Johannine terminology, has in some
sense been extinguished, though it is equally clear that doing so by
excoriating those held responsible through presenting them as pure
hypocrites, unconcerned with anything but power, does much more than
raise disturbing questions. Matthew 28:11-15, which has the Jewish
authorities bribing the Romans guards to quell stories about Jesus'
rising only intensifies these difficulties — especially when one
considers that the giving of the Great Commission (28:19: "Go therefore
and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything that I have commanded you.") still informs most Christian
understandings of mission.
[9] In French,
source, in fact, means "spring".
[10] I take it as given
that, despite Freud's own hyper-denials of religion, psychoanalysis
itself, as a practice, at once relies upon and critically evaluates
religious practice. This is a large concern of Eric Santner's recent
On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, which places Freud and
Franz Rosenzweig (among others) into deep and fruitful conversation.
[11] Along these lines,
Eric Santner's My Own Private Germany, a re-reading of Freud's
"reading" the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber, presents rich material
for consideration.
[12] P. 144, emphasis
original. Given Rose's deeply divisive "place" for many members of the
Society, I can only say here that I am not endorsing her understanding
of the relations between Jews and Christians, much less Judaism and
Christianity, as a whole, but, obviously, neither that am I willing
entirely to consign her work to the category of "failed experiment".
[13] Cf.,
Proverbs 8.
[14] Jeremiah
31:15-16
[15] Of course, the
practice and theory of SR has thus far not managed to attend to the
role(s) of this Scriptural translation in our work., and I am not in a
position — in this article — to offer even a concise
examination of the complex issues involved. (Martin Hengel's recent
The Septuagint as Christian Scripture provides much valuable
assistance in thinking about the problems from one particular "angle",
that of Christian historical-critical scholarship, but as yet there are
few contemporary Jewish, much less Muslim [for obvious reasons], efforts
in the same area.) My hope is that the observations offered here will
serve as stimulation for all of us to consider how this common work (as
distinguished, for example, from Jerome's Vulgatus) from a much
earlier time may yet add rich dimensions to ours.
Also, I pursue my interpretation of aspects of these verses in
deliberate — if also studied — ignorance of the many
commentaries which have already been offered of them. This is not out of
dissatisfaction with them, but rather in an effort to think anew what
may be possible within the text itself.
[16] It is in this light
that the second dream of the bride in 5:2-8 ought to be read. (In fact,
this passage deserves extended comment in its own right.)
[17] This is the story
of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, which, with its
intertwining of sexual and salvific motifs, fairly begs for
consideration in light of a reading of the Song.
In fact, it is a shame that current restrictions forbid an in-depth
examination of the other uses of pege in the New Testament. One
is at Mark 5:29, concerning the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage;
one at James 3:11, and another at 2 Peter 2:17, both of which are
negative comparisons to "sources" incapable of expansive richness; and
no less than five occur in Revelation (7:17, 8:10, 14:7, 16:4, and
21:6), which are themselves so internally complex that they defy easy
exegesis.
[18] It is a
questionable assertion, but I find nothing in the Song which
conduces to any weakening of the ethical strictures laid out elsewhere
in Torah.
© 2003, Society for Scriptural
Reasoning
