Jewish Myth Research Articles

“A Death Like Sleep”: The Christology of Milton's Twenty-Third Sonnet

ABSTRACT Milton's “late espoused Saint” appears at the center of two planes of spiritual movement, horizontal and vertical, each culminating in God and corresponding to the traditions of Christian typology and Christian Neoplatonism. On the former, she reveals eschatologically Christ's redemptive self-sacrifice, subtly fulfilling the sacrifice ethos of pagan and Jewish myth and history. On the latter, she, like Dante's Beatrice, descends the Neoplatonic order seeking to “embrace” her beloved through grace. That the sonnet's persona, who represents every Christian, including Milton, fails to recognize the import of the saint is due to the Thomistic-Neoplatonic doctrine of intellectual blindness and man's desiccated will to choose “higher” objects of love. Hence, like Dante in the Purgatorio, the persona's unrefined affection casts a veil over his own eyes. His affectional egocentricity (“my... Mine”) prohibits his understanding that the “late espoused Saint” is now wedded to the true Bridegroom. The vision breaks at the word “delight,” as does Adam's dream of Eve (PL VIII, 474—80), signifying in the context of the Thomistic idea of dilection (love from rational choice, electionem) the persona's archetypical error. The persona's still “fancied sight” causes him to “wake” to the Christian Neoplatonic dream life of mortality.

The Concept of Nebenwelt in Paul Celan's Poetry

The poem Hafen from the collection Atemwende coins the adjective `nebenweltlich' to denote a level of experience beside that posited as `real,' namely a world of metaphorical transformation, specifically that of poetic language. The ambivalence of such a world makes it a useful starting point for an examination of the following controversial issues in Celan criticism: whether Celan's poetry is basically `dialogisch' or `monologisch,' whether the term `absolute Metapher' can be meaningfully applied to Celan's imagery and whether Celan's poetry in general is concerned with striving towards a transcendent, higher reality. Using the hypothesis that the aspect of Celan's verse best described as `Nebenwelt' has a function within his work similar to Levi-Strauss's view of the role of myths in general, this essay traces the use of metaphor by means of a chronological sampling of Celan's verse. From this emerges the need to distinguish between thematic and structural uses of metaphor, particularly in those poems which have poetry or language as one of their themes. The conclusions are drawn that the monologue-dialogue issue is an indirect approach to the more central issue of invocation structures and should give place to an examination of these, that it is not meaningful to speak of Celan's metaphors as being `absolute' in any formal sense, and that the function of `Nebenwelt' as a thematically indifferent erent agent of metaphorical transformation tends to work against the dominance of any single `direction' in the poetry, especially that of a reaching out towards metaphysical transcendence. Taking all the various functions of 'Nebenwelt' together, it appears strikingly similar to aspects of the Jewish myth of the golem, leading to further correspondences between the theme of `Nebenwelt' and the functions of imagery it denotes.

Man and Temple in Jewish Myth and Ritual

Man and Temple in Jewish Myth and Ritual

HET HEIL IN DE FILOSOFIE VAN PAUL RICOEUR

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SUMMARY This article contemplates a historical examination of the methodical and the thematic sketch of salvation in the highly dialectical and systematic thought of Ricoeur. The very problematics of evil and salvation dictates the threefold structure of his Philosophy of Will. The Eidetics of Will gives the phenomenological description of the neutral will-structures, the Symbolism and Empirics of Will presents the analysis and reflection on existence guilt and looking for salvation, and the Poetics of Will marks man fascinated by a creative Salvation, 1. Hermeneutics and interpretation of the symbols of evil and salvation in the phenomenology of religion and Freudism After the elucidation of the doctrinal and methodical options and of the meanings of symbol, myth, hermeneutics and interpretation, first comes the purely comparative description of the primary symbols of stain, sin and guilt, in which evil is successively acknowledged”in itself”,”before God” and”before guilty self” and to which in each case corresponds a different type of liberation. Then follows a morphology of the most representative myths or secondary symbols: the Babylonian cosmic myth of primitive evil, the Greek tragic myth which imputes evil to the evil god, fate and hubristic-generous man, the Jewish Adamic myth with man as bearing the chief responsibility for evil, and the Hellenic Orphic myth which makes the body responsible for evil. Finally there is the Freudian interpretation of religious symbols. By his genetic and economic methods of interpretation Freud has worked out the initial analog between religious practices and neurosis, and between religious belief and dream into identity. This double version of symbols reveals a tension between the regressive, archaeological hermeneutics of Freud and the prospective, teleological hermeneutics of the phenomenology of religion.2. The engaged description of the myths of evil and salvation This exegesis is necessary since the philosopher cannot permanently entrench himself behind an attitude of neutrality with regard to the true myth. This exegesis demonstrates that the Hebrew myth of primitive fall owing to its complex structure and dialectic tensions, re-affirms the anteriority of evil from the cosmic myth, the fatalism of evil from the tragic myth and the exteriority of evil from the Orphic myth, and also reveals an ethic-tragic conflict in the consciousness of guilt.3. Elements of a philosophical reflection on the symbols of guilt and salvation and on the Freudian illusion of religion Ricoeur hopes to reconciliate the singularity, the plurality and the hermeneutic conflict of symbols with the universality, the rigorism and the coherence of the philosophical intention thanks to a reflexive philosophy being a recuperation of the ego in its attempt to be through the works giving evidence of this attempt. That's why he will try to justify the priority and the ethic-tragic conflict of the Jewish myth by a transcendental deduction, viz. by showing the value of truth of the Adamic myth from its confrontation with psycho-analysis, the speculative symbols of evil with S. Augustine, Kant, Hegel etc…. Ricoeur thinks to find the answer to the hermeneutic dispute in an internal dialectics between the reducing and instauring hermeneutics, which is concretely to be found in what Freud calls the”hyperdefiniteness” of the symbol (e.g Sophocles' King Oedipus).4. Fragmentary perspectives on a creative Salvation Active-receptive bipolarity of consciousness, the result of the eidetic description, as well as the ethic-tragic tension in the consciousness of guilt have in Ricoeur's mind no sense, and thus cannot be, except from an ultimate unit and reconciliation. The transition from the existential duality to an ontological unity cannot possibly be a pure explicitation, but requires a new Copernican turn centring the Cogito on a creative Salvation, thanks to the expedience of and the reflection on evil and liberation. The further justification of the priority and the hermeneutic conflict of the Adamic myth too require the same poetic method. It is as horizon of my archaeology and teleology that a genesis and an eschatology, viz. the Quite-Other reveals Himself. Salvation is waited for”in spite of” and”thanks to” evil, and even is a”how much more”. Ricoeur thinks to find the recognition and transition of the tragic in a hazardous”christology” in which suffering is not only a moment of being, but also of divinity by the”necessary” and nevertheless”free death” of the God-man. The value of Freud's critique of religion is situated in the purification of the inevitable idol-content of religious symbols. Freud's flaw however consists in his exclusively regressive interpretation. Nevertheless even with Freud, Ricoeur thinks to find elements for an”epigenesis” of infantile religiosity (guilt and comfort) to a mature religious belief.