Is God laughing or crying?

I ask, you see, because I have 'got religion'!  No, no, I'm not banging on your door asking if you believe or any of that sort of thing, but ever since I read Jonathan Sachs's superb book The Great Partnership I have become interested in the history of religion, or to be precise, mainly the Christian religion.  What nags away at the back of my mind is the incredible speed with which, in those ancient times, it spread round the Roman empire and was lapped up so quickly by the populations of so many different countries.  Of course, now I think about it, I can see the attraction for ordinary people in a religion in which prince and pauper are equal before the eyes of God.  Even so, the speed of its spread was amazing.

Talking about this with a friend before Christmas prompted her to buy me another book, The History of Christian Thought by Jonathan Hill.  I am only partway through it but already, like God in my title above, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  If indeed God did despatch his Son to earth to preach a simple but hugely powerful and persuasive message of morality to be easily understood by the great unwashed and ignorant, then surely he must have realised that it would only be a matter of time - a very, very short time - before the intellectuals got at it!  Amongst the first was Justin Martyr, about a hundred years after Christ, and after Justin it was downhill all the way.  Endless 'picking of nits' and 'dancing on the heads of pins' was undertaken by sundry bloody intellectuals so that the simplicity of the original message was buried under a slag-heap of contradictory interpretations, many of which would in time be enforced by axe, sword and fire.

And then yesterday, via the good offices of Arts & Letters Daily, I came across an excellent review of a book called Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg.  The reviewer, R. I. Moore at The Nation, begins with Nirenberg's unique (as far as I know) interpretation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in which he proposes:

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,” Antonio wonders at the outset of The
Merchant of Venice. What could seem more universal, more culturally neutral
than melancholy? Yet if David Nirenberg’s argument in Anti-Judaism is correct, by Shakespeare’s time the negative associations of Judaism were so universal, and so close to the surface of Christian consciousness, that Antonio’s words immediately prompt the suspicion that he might be a Jew. Other characters soon echo the suggestion. His friend Salerio attributes Antonio’s mood to anxiety about the safety of the ships carrying his merchandise overseas, thus taxing him with excessive regard for his money; then, when Antonio repudiates the accusation, another friend, Gratiano, charges him with hypocrisy. Either way, Nirenberg writes, Antonio “appears to be, in the vocabulary of Christianity, a ‘Jew.’”

Well, I have lost count of the number of times when Shakespearean experts have offered up a new way of looking at his plays which have left me open-mouthed and my own pet theories in ruins about me.  This way of looking at Antonio is certainly new to me but . . . but . . . now you mention it  . . . !  Anyway, both the book and the review are concerned with wider matters.  They both draw attention to the way in which the early 'Church Elders' (or bloody intellectuals, if you prefer!) felt the need to differentiate themselves from Judaism despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that they both drew their inspiration from the same early chronicles.  This need to distance themselves from the Jews went hand-in-hand with the necessity of crushing any Christian sects who failed to abide by the totally man-made creed of the early church, and , of course, any pagans still surviving who preferred their old, semi-human and therefore recognisable Gods.  Over the centuries these habits, which might be described as 'getting your retaliation in first' persisted with increasingly bloody results.  But through it all ran the over-riding necessity to mark the differences between Christianity and Judaism with results that live - and die - with us today.

I think He's crying!

 

Related articles

Nirenberg's mischievous ANTI-JUDAISM

The Merchant of Venice

Is Christianity a Philosophy, a Moral System, a Way to Salvation or What??

Oy Vey, Christian Soldiers

Derek Leman on Jewish identity

Justin Martyr: The Dialogue with Trypho

Comments

[Dom]

Be prepared to have your mouth drop once more. When I was in high school, I was told that Antonio was gay -- he is sad because he is losing Bassanio to a woman. I just checked on google and apparantly that's a common interpretation.

[David Duff]

Yes, indeed it is, Dom, but I'm not totally convinced. WS was interested in the nature of melancholia - perhaps and I stress, perhaps - because he suffered from it himself. One of his most mysterious and interesting characters is Jaques from 'As You Like It', the epitome of self-induced loneliness and melancholia - a detached man who spends his entire time observing and commenting on others - exactly like WS himself.

Incidentally, I once played the absolutely crucial role of the comic Launcelot Gobbo in 'The Merchant'. This was many years ago before the advent of this internet-thingie but had you known, Dom, I feel certain you would have caught the first plane 'over here'! Talk about laugh, no-one did!

[JK]

May/may not be pertinent but me being the same JK as yesterday...

One of those "old era Intellectuals" feller name of Saint Jerome (Patron Saint of Translators) got it into his head to use the original Hebrew texts to 'correctly interpret' into an official Latin text.

And so it came to pass that when Moses' descent off the Mount came to pass and Jerome came upon the word 'krn' (ancient Hebrew being written without vowels) Jerry wrote it out as "karan" as opposed to what modern scholars know from the context should have been written as "keren" - that led even up to the middle of last century's - to some "unfortunate" artistic depictions.

The word had to do with the aspect of Moses' face.

"Keren" = radiant - "karan" = horns.

[David Duff]

As so often, JK, you are a mine of information!

[JK]

So now you're a man of faith?

(Or at least - closer to the "hows & whys"?)

[David Duff]

No, JK, not a man of faith, I remain, as ever, a Doubting Thomas!

[JK]

No matter, it's the hows and whys stuff happened.

[rogerh]

I thought Hinduism, Buddhism and Mohammedanism spread pretty fast too - a common feature maybe. Then the world seems to be run by the clever dicks for the benefit of the clever dicks so a counterwieght (albeit an illusory counterweight) would seem useful and acceptable to the er clever dicks. But as an atheist I cannot get away from a fundamental need in all peoples for some sort of communal ceremonial - and churches of all kinds adorn our world for whatever reason.

Whenever humans put words together another group of humans set about 'interpreting' those words and twisting them to their own purpose. Sometimes these folk are called literary critics and sometimes they are called lawyers but both groups work really hard at their agenda. In a way each and every reader makes their own interpretation.

[David Duff]

Indeed, JK, that is what I find fascinating - and in some cases, infuriating.

Yes, Roger, I was reminded of that by the recent shenanigans at the investment of the new Pope. People still love ceremony. And your description of the "clever Dicks" forever 'interpreting' is exactly right. Hence the question in my title.