Mosaic
Mark
2:18, 21-22
“Truth will become
fractured.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 97a)
Here
is a strange paradox, oft repeated in the history of religion. People know
major change is impending. They feel their certainties threatened: "truth
will be fractured," i.e., misunderstood. Truth, they think, will be
counterfeited and apostatized from. The Christ will be countered by the
Antichrist, truth by error. And this, oddly enough, will herald the advent
of the Messiah, the Parousia of Truth. The fracture of truth, they see as
the (temporary) ruination of it.
The farthest their
religious imaginations can reach is the impending subversion of old truth,
by a new contender--and then the reaffirmation of the old, defeating the
challenge of the new. Thus they engage in a kind of harmonization of what
would otherwise seem to presage the coming to birth of something new and
good.
The new, the ostensible
Antichrist, has its disciples as well, and these people recognize the
supposed antichrist as the new Christ, not the false Christ. Indeed, the
old Christ/truth loses his claim as soon as its appointed time is up. Then
it is time for it to make the retiring gesture of John the Baptist (John
3). These disciples fully embrace the imagery of the birth pangs of a new
age. They are not temporary storm clouds before the old is gloriously
restored. And for them the image of the fracturing of the truth denoted
something like the shattering of an egg shell so that something new can be
born.
The conflict comes
because the new challenges the old on its own ground, challenges it for
the same turf. It wants to capture the prerogatives of the old, and the
allegiance of its followers. So it must reinterpret the old as pointing to
itself.
It is generally known
that allegorical interpretations arise spontaneously whenever a conflict
between new ideas and those expressed in a sacred book necessitates some
form of compromise. What is true of allegorical interpretation is still
more applicable to the specifically mystical interpretation of such texts.
(Gershom Scholem, “The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism,”in On the
Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, p. 33)
Actually the thought
processes of mystics are largely unconscious, and they may be quite
unaware of the clash between old and new which is of such passionate
interest to the historian. They are thoroughly steeped in the religious
tradition in which they have grown up, and many notions which strike a
modern reader as fantastic distortions of a text spring from a conception
of Scripture which to the mystic seems perfectly natural. (Ibid.)
But the establishment
just cannot see its way across such a yawning gulf (we need not charge
them with protecting vested interests, though that may be true as well).
Thus the controversy. The founder of the Baha’i Faith faced the same
challenge. See Kitab-I-Iqan:
As most of the divines
have failed to apprehend the meaning of these verses, and have not grasped
the significance of the Day of Resurrection [cf. John 5:25], they
therefore have foolishly interpreted these verses according to their idle
and faulty conception” (p. 78). [See John 5:39-40.]
As the adherents of Jesus
have never understood the hidden meaning of these words, and as the signs
which they and the leaders of their Faith have expected have failed to
appear [cf. Thomas, saying 3], they therefore refuse to acknowledge, even
until now, the truth of those Manifestations of Holiness that have since
the days of Jesus been made manifest... They have even failed to perceive
that, were the signs of the Manifestation of God in every age to appear in
the visible realm in accordance with the text of established traditions,
none could possibly deny or turn away, nor would the blessed be
distinguished from the miserable, and the transgressor from the
God-fearing. [That is, there would be no room for the venture of faith, if
the evidence were overwhelming.] Judge fairly: Were the prophecies
recorded in the Gospel to be literally fulfilled; were Jesus, Son of Mary,
accompanied by angels, to descend from the visible heaven upon the clouds,
who would dare to disbelieve, who would dare to reject the truth, and wax
disdainful? … It was owing to a misunderstanding of these truths that many
a Christian divine hath objected to Muhammad… Such objections and
differences have persisted in every age and century. The people have
always busied themselves with such specious discourses, vainly protesting:
“Wherefore hath not this or that sign appeared?” … As they have literally
interpreted the Word of God…, and expounded… according to their own
deficient understanding, they have therefore deprived themselves and all
their people of the bountiful showers of the grace and mercies of God (p.
80-82).
When we translate this
onto an individual level, we can understand the alarm and reluctance of
people, presented with new evidence or the challenge of a new revelation.
They will be challenged only by something they feel they must take
seriously, though they deny it. (But they would hardly bother to deny it
if it hadn't hit a nerve.)
They are in transit to a
new form of faith. They must first pass through the death of their
previous form of faith, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. In so
doing, they undergo something like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's 4 stages of
accepting death: denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance. This is a way of
heeding Paul's advice about the weaker brethren: keep in mind where
someone is on the path before you decide how to address their questions.
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M Price
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