Incarnation

I am astonished, astounded, and amazed by French feminism, by Greek rhetoric, and by Jewish translation. So I started my Christmas readings early this year.

After its incredible, presumptuous introductory gene-a-o-logy, this initial narrative startles me:

18 τοῦ δὲ ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις οὕτως ἦν. μνηστευθείσης τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ μαρίας τῶ ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου.
19 ἰωσὴφ δὲ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς, δίκαιος ὢν καὶ μὴ θέλων αὐτὴν δειγματίσαι, ἐβουλήθη λάθρᾳ ἀπολῦσαι αὐτήν.
20 ταῦτα δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐνθυμηθέντος ἰδοὺ ἄγγελος κυρίου κατ᾽ ὄναρ ἐφάνη αὐτῶ λέγων, ἰωσὴφ υἱὸς δαυίδ, μὴ φοβηθῇς παραλαβεῖν μαρίαν τὴν γυναῖκά σου, τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν ἐκ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἁγίου·
21 τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἰησοῦν, αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν.
22 τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος,
23 ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἐμμανουήλ, ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός.
24 ἐγερθεὶς δὲ ὁ ἰωσὴφ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕπνου ἐποίησεν ὡς προσέταξεν αὐτῶ ὁ ἄγγελος κυρίου καὶ παρέλαβεν τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ·
25 καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὖ ἔτεκεν υἱόν· καὶ ἐκάλεσεν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἰησοῦν.

Do you see it?

l' écriture feminine, Et

1:20 ἐνθυμηθέντος, καὶ

7:14 ‏לָ֠כֵן יִתֵּ֨ן אֲדֹנָ֥י ה֛וּא לָכֶ֖ם א֑וֹת הִנֵּ֣ה הָעַלְמָ֗ה הָרָה֙ וְיֹלֶ֣דֶת בֵּ֔ן וְקָרָ֥את שְׁמ֖וֹ עִמָּ֥נוּ אֵֽל׃

But just so none of us (Jew nor Greek, Hellene nor barbarian, Hélène Cixous nor man logician, slave nor free, male nor female) is offended, let's listen together. Hear. Here's another Jewish translation of that one above (Matthew's Greek translation of angel language and Hebrew translated by Willis Barnstone into our English).

18 The birth of Yeshua the Mashiah happened in this way. Miryam his mother was engaged to Yosef, yet before they came together she discovered a child in her womb, placed there by the holy spirit.
19 Yosef her husband, a just man and loath to expose her, resolved to divorce her secretly.
20 But as he was making plans, look, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream an said, Yosef, son of David, do not fear to take Miryam as your wife. The child engendered in her came from the holy spirit,
21 and she will give birth, and you will name him Yeshua,for he will save his people from their wrongdoings.
22 All this was done to fulfill the word of God uttered through his prophet Yeshaya, saying,
23 "Listen. A young woman will have a child in her womb and give birth to a son, and his name will be Immanuel."
24 When Yosef rose from a dream, he did what the angel of the Lord told him, and he accepted her as his wife,
25 yet he did not know here until after she gave birth, and he called the child the name Yeshua.

Now, what if that little Greek girl were reading this to us? You know, the girl whose mother pleaded with Yeshua somehow miraculously to exorcise the deity her daughter had been given over to. (See Mark 7 or fast forward to chapter 15 in Matthew or confess a recognition of the family resemblance of this young woman to the prostituted oracles.)

Imagine that the body of this female, deflowered by proprietary pimping priests and yet unnamed in any man's history, is now freed of the demon.

Consider the possibility that she then follows after this Joshua who saves from their wrongdoings.
Suppose she's bilingual in the Hellene and the Hebrew tongues.
Suspend your disbelief that she becomes biliterate and finds her way to the libraries of Alexandria held secret from Rome in so-called dirty Egyptian mothers' cupboards.
Understand how (differently) she reads men such as Matthew translating into Greek (as above)
and men (as below) such as Isaiah and Hesiod and Homer and Aristotle.

For those who have ears to hear, overhear the sounds of her voice (as if in [y]our English):

הִנֵּה הָעַלְמָה, הָרָה וְיֹלֶדֶת בֵּן, וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ, עִמָּנוּ אֵל.
(see, the young woman will conceive, and bear a son, and will call his name Immanuel.)

ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Εμμανουηλ
(see, the virgin will hold in her womb a child, and will bear a son, and will call his name Emmanouel)

ἡ δὲ γυνὴ τέτορ' ἡβώοι, πέμπτῳ δὲ γαμοῖτο.
(The young woman's four years older than puberty; wed in her fifth year.)
παρθεν-ικὴν δὲ γαμεῖν, ὥς κ' ἤθεα κεδνὰ διδάξῃς,
(While virgin-istic, she's to be married, to teach her all her respectable duties.)

καὶ διὰ παρθεν-ικῆς ἁπαλόχροος οὐ διάησιν,
(And through virgin-istic smooth-skinned maidens it cannot penetrate)

ἔνθα οἱ ἀντεβόλησε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,
(bright-eyed goddess Athena met him)
παρθενικῇ ἐϊκυῖα νεήνιδι, κάλπιν ἐχούσῃ.
(in the virgin-istic guise of a young maiden woman holding a pitcher.)

ἡ ῥητορική ἐστιν ἀντίστροφος τῇ διαλεκτικῆ
(Speaker-ism is a turn taken different from the "-ism" of talking Truth.)
. . . ἐνθυμημάτων . . . ἐστὶ σῶμα τῆς πίστεως,
(. . . inner passions . . . embody the beliefs,)



And just to help us sympathize and empathize with the inner passions (the "rhetorical enthymemes embodied in the persuasions") of this young lady, we listen to a scene described by rhetorician George A. Kennedy in his New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism:

The truth is immediately and intuitively apprehended because it is true. Some see it, others do not, but there is no point in trying to persuade the latter. This is the most radical form of Christian rhetoric. When Jesus performs his first miracle, the witnesses are "amazed" (1:27); they recognize truth but do not comprehend it rationally. The miracle is a sign of authority, as the crowd at once admits. No effort is made to include any picture of Jesus' early teaching as seen in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. This kind of explanation is irrelevant to Mark. When Jesus preaches in Mark it is in parables, which are directly apprehended. There are enthymemes in Mark . . . (105).

So inner passions embody beliefs, and some see it while others do not. And all too often this is the grief of the teachers and preachers and other reachers for our beliefs and our bodies. Notice how even physical bodies embody belief:

Physicist Anatol Rapoport:
Once when teaching elementary physics, I was impressed with the resistance of mature intelligent students to some fundamental facts and concepts. For example, when a man falling in a parachute has reached constant velocity, the forces action on him add up to zero. Beginners almost invariably resist this conclusion. "If there is not resultant force action on a falling body," they ask, "why does it fall?" Proof by appeal to the fundamental equation of motion is of little avail. They “believe” the equation, but they believe their preconceptions. (qtd. in Rhetoric: Discovery and Change, by Richard E. Young, Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth L. Pike, p. 239)

Philosopher Professor Dallas Willard:
Sometimes I will half jokingly say to [my 101 students] as they hand me their tests after an exam, “Did you believe what you wrote?” And they all smile. Because they know that the important thing is not to believe what you write but to write the right answers ("Truth: Can We Do Without It?" p. 12).

Rhetorician Professor Richard Young:
[Our co-taught advanced course in rhetorical argument] did not achieve its principal objective: That is, it did not appear to help students develop considered judgments on ethical problems. . . This was surprising since most of us, I think, would predict that the thinking [i.e., beliefs] of at least a few students would have changed to some significant degree. But, to my dismay, their pretests were the best predictors of their posttests. ("Toward an Adequate Pedagogy for Rhetorical Argumentation: A Case Study in Invention" p. 161).

Psychologist Professor Haim Ginott:
Dear Teacher,
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers.
Children poisoned by educated physicians.
Infants killed by trained nurses.
Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.
So I am suspicious of education. My request is:
Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns.
Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
(Teacher and Child, p. 371)



Now we return to the child whose body experienced bondage beyond belief. What does she hear? What does she believe in her unbound body? What does she say?

18 τοῦ δὲ ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις οὕτως ἦν. μνηστευθείσης τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ μαρίας τῶ ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου.
This is the birth of the Anointed, Joshua. His mother Miriam was engaged to Josef; before they came together she held in her womb a child who came by the Breath of the Special One.

19 ἰωσὴφ δὲ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς, δίκαιος ὢν καὶ μὴ θέλων αὐτὴν δειγματίσαι, ἐβουλήθη λάθρᾳ ἀπολῦσαι αὐτήν.
Josef, her man, her husband, a just person who didn't wish to make a show of her, counseled secretly to release her from himself.

20 ταῦτα δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐνθυμηθέντος ἰδοὺ ἄγγελος κυρίου κατ᾽ ὄναρ ἐφάνη αὐτῶ λέγων,
ἰωσὴφ υἱὸς δαυίδ, μὴ φοβηθῇς παραλαβεῖν μαρίαν τὴν γυναῖκά σου, τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν ἐκ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἁγίου·
These inner passions of his were angst. See. An announcer of the Master, in a dream, appeared to him to state:
"Josef, son of David, don't be afraid to take beside you Miriam, your woman, your wife; the baby birthed in her, in fact, is by the Breath of the Special One.

21 τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἰησοῦν, αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν.
She will deliver a son, and you will call his name Joshua; he will, in fact, save his people from their wrongdoings."

22 τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος,
These events were born out entirely so that the things spoken by the Master would be fulfilled through the Prophet who stated:

23 ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἐμμανουήλ, ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός.
"See, the young virgin will hold in her womb a child, and will bear a son, and will call his name Emmanouel," which is translated "With us is God."

24 ἐγερθεὶς δὲ ὁ ἰωσὴφ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕπνου ἐποίησεν ὡς προσέταξεν αὐτῶ ὁ ἄγγελος κυρίου καὶ παρέλαβεν τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ·
When Josef got up from his sleep, he did what the announcer of the Master told him, and he took beside himself his woman, his wife.

25 καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὖ ἔτεκεν υἱόν· καὶ ἐκάλεσεν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἰησοῦν.
And he did not know her until after she delivered her son; and he called his name Joshua.