John (1)—
Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
[St. John welcomed in Heaven]
Pien–wen and the Johannine Corpus
Given the nature of its first audience (the polyglot masses of Tibet, the Steppes,
and China), the deposit offers clues to the dissemination and popularization of ancient
religious paradoxes. One of these hints comes from the earliest discovered examples
of pien–wen, a vivid, vernacular literature uniting prose, verse, and pictures.
The Tun–huang discovery contains Nestorian Christian, Manichean,
Taoist, Confucian, and other writings, though most of its pien–wen preach
Buddhism, a faith for which they are certainly well suited. Arthur Waley compares
the pictures to those used in Buddhist meditation (242). Victor Mair writes that
they both try to make the invisible visible and to demonstrate the impossibility
of such a project:
The pien of pien–wen is etymologically related to a Buddhist technical
term meaning “transformation.” “Transformation” here implies the coming or bringing
into being (i.e., into illusory reality, Skt. maya ) of a scene or deity.…Highly
skilled storytellers and actors—with the help of visual aids, gestures, and music—were
also thought to be able to replicate transformational acts of creation. The ultimate
religious purpose of such transformations was the release of all sentient beings
from the vicious cycle of death and rebirth (sa.m s–a ra). By hearing and
viewing these transformations and reflecting upon them, the individual could become
enlightened (Mair 1983, 2-3).
In Buddhist thought, these Buddhas or deities had originally been human, and so their
devotees might rise as high as they, joining such L8-like congregations as Mahayana scriptures depict. The pien-wen genre,
though, was adaptable to many faiths. Not even all of its precursors were Buddhist,
some being Hindu storytelling with pictures (e.g., ´s aubhikas, yamapa.t
as, ma.n khas, and pratimadharins; Mair 5). The goal was to make the highest
possible human attainment (L8?) possible for the greatest number.
As Chinese literature, the pien–wen flourished from the eighth to tenth centuries C.E., undergoing a very specific evolution. Another way of looking at that genre, however, is as a culmination of many tendencies present in both Europe and Asia from late antiquity through the Middle Ages: the rise of vernacular literature, religious eclecticism, the juxtaposition of verse and prose, and elaborate illumination of manuscripts. These are all developments in the performance of texts to a wide audience, many of whom lack knowledge of a classical language, have no aristocratic vested interest in a particular tradition, find interspersed song and prose narrative entertaining, and relish colorful illustrations.
Counter to such popularization come almost inevitable objections from literate defenders of consistency, who decry the conflation of different modalities in fantastic and paradoxical texts. Thus, the pien–wen lost fashion during a wave of Neo–Confucian elitism and remained as merely a declassé amusement.
From the third century C.E. onwards, similar tendencies of popularization
had already existed in Manichean manuscripts. Indeed, among the oldest references
to pien–wen is one tinged with Manicheanism (itself a mixture of Christianity,
Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism; Waley 1960, 246). The Buddhist component of Manicheanism
is most evident in Turfanian Central Asia, where the Manichean rise of souls toward
the Paradise of Light is described as movement between (Buddhist) “samsara” and “nirvana”
(Sedlar 230). Being already partly Buddhist, Manicheanism can, of course, adapt itself
easily to a Buddhist audience, but remains of Nestorian texts show a similar tendency
to find Confucian, Taoist, or Buddhist cognates of Christian terminology. Unsurprisingly,
a Nestorean monument from this period had at its top, cross, lotus, and cloud—symbols
respectively of Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism. According to that monument, the
emperor began a project of translating Christian scriptures and other religious writings
to add to his library numbering about two–hundred–thousand volumes (Cary–Elwes 19–2).
Let us begin with the Manicheans, probably the first to bring Christian imagery to
China. Mani (ca. 215–276 C.E.) wrote six scriptures in the vernacular of international
trade, Aramaic, to reach the widest possible audience. An eclectic, he proclaimed,
“all writings, wisdom and parables of the earlier religions have come to mine” (Widengren
10-11). He also “expressed [this] in a parable taken from Buddhism (Ud–a na V,5;
Cullavagga IX,I), in which he likens his religion to the world ocean, into which
all rivers, that is, other religious traditions flow”(klimkeit 7). Thus, Manichean
writings adjusted themselves to the local religious ambiance. The ones from Tun–huang,
for instance, “remind one at first sight of Mah–a y–a na s–u tras. On closer inspection,
however, the Buddhist terms turn out to be mere husks around an unmistakably Manichean
kernel” (Kimkeit 5).
Aware of the power of songs in performance, he composed Psalms
of the Bema. It is among other things a self advertisement of his scriptures as in
his psalm 241, which likens his Pragmateia to a medicinal sponge, his Book
of the Mysteries to a surgical knife, his Book of the Giants to a swab,
and his Book of the Letters to a universal antidote. Ort 97. Like most scriptures
his have a mystical devotion to their linguistic medium as in his Living Gospel’s
being divided into twenty–two chapters after the Syriac alphabet. (Widengren 77).
Probably greater than his talents as musician and poet were his gifts as visual artist,
including the ability to draw a perfect circle free hand (Windengren 110). Tales
of his prowess survived in Persian tradition as in this fifteenth–century account
of how he produced his Book of Painting (–A rdahang):
[After a year during which he sequestered himself in a cave] in his hand he held
the tablet, coloured with wonderful paintings and illustrated with manifold drawings.
And all who saw it said, “Thousandfold are the drawings seen in the world, but painting
like this has not yet come among us.” They abode in dumbfounded amazement before
the tablet and Mani declared to them, “This have I brought back with me from heaven
that it may serve as my prophetic miracle” (Widengren 109).
He expected the illuminations to facilitate explanation to the uneducated and “complete
educated people’s instruction” (Widengren 107). Apparently, he even placed The
Book of Painting on his own throne (Ort 254).
Precursors of his competitors future devotion to illuminated manuscripts, the scriptures carried by his elite missionary corps exceeded in cost and visual splendor those of Christian and eventually, Moslem evangelists (who, nonetheless, already began investing heavily in well–adorned texts; Widengren 113). In his Kephalaia 154.2 he boasts of his scriptures as constituting his superiority over previous prophets:
|
For the Apostles all, my Brothers, who before me
came, (Widengren 108). |
Virtually the only possessions permitted to his preachers were those scriptures, which they served as copyists, illuminators, and lectors (Sedlar 220). Perhaps indicative of their high status as clerks among the Manichees, an Uighur graphic shows scribes beneath the tree of life. Congregations consisted of literate evangelists (“the Elect”) and laity (“the Hearers”)—a distinction largely between those devoted solely to the books and those who could marry, work, et cetera (Burkitt 440).
Looking backward and forward throughout an evolution is legitimated
by the threshold-systems understanding of unpredictable junctures in history as being,
nonetheless, determined by previous conditions, i.e., inherent within those conditions.
In particular, dynamic systems traverse a series of strange attractors as does the
weather through seasons of a particular climate. Related to population increase,
spread of information has evolved (e.g., orality to manuscript culture), each phase
reflected at various scales throughout the works of that epoch. Today, both for good
and ill, synergetic trends of vividness, popularity, and heterogeneity have reached
extreme expression in the electronic media. Many of its precursors such as the pien–wen
survive only as curiosities, but one important stage remains of continuing influence,
the Johannine corpus. Written in ungrammatical Koine with visual imagery and profound
self–contradictions, it affected the whole world, including the faiths of Tun–huang.
The Flooding Light
|
Come with Grace, true Word, great Luminary, and flooding Light. —A Manichean Hymn (Widengren 87) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… In him was life, and the life was the light of men.…The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,(and we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father,) . —John 1.1, 1.9, 1.14. |
During the common era, however, the idea bifurcated, the Johannine
representing populism and the Jewish version conservatism. In the Mishnah (Chagigah
13a), for instance, a boy sits contemplating the word chasmal (Ezek. 1.27).
Literally it means “amber,” but the Talmud interprets it as signifying a class of
“fiery angels” (Cohen 145n2). Suddenly, as the child stares at the scroll, flame
flashes forth from the word, reducing him to ashes. So far, the story simply provides
another instance of interconnection of word (scripture), light (the fire), and superhuman
beings (the angels). Its interpretation of this interweaving, however, lies implicit
within what follows the story, the rabbis’ reaction to it. They first wish to withdraw
the book of Ezekiel from circulation. Chananyah ben Hezekiah then argues that the
child is unusually “wise.” Danger to the average person is nonexistent; therefore,
the book of Ezekiel may be allowed in the canon.
The rabbis’ perplexity exposes their ambivalence to the child’s experience. On the
one hand, it shows him to be extraordinary—so sensitive to divine language that it
becomes visible—language as laser-like Light. Words are not mere abstractions but
the perceptible expression of superhuman personality: the angels. Thus, he is praised
as “wise.” On the other hand, his fate is so undesirable that the rabbis will risk
losing a portion of the scriptures in order to avoid it. Indeed, the story may be
seen as cautionary, warning the faithful away from excess. The rabbis’ own route
toward the spiritual is a very controlled and linear one, Talmudic study, and they
worry that even this slow path may be too fast for the sensitive.
In contrast, the Gospel According to John takes a popular approach. Instead of being the property of bibliophiles, the Word has changed to flesh while still remaining personified Light. Here is the ultimate pien–wen or transformation story, the enduring embodiment of the absolute in the concrete. It hypostatizes metaphysical categories into tales of a Galilean carpenter. Surely hearing of Him is easier than doing etymological researches into chasmal. Relationship of Word to God is not philological but genealogical, Son to Father, a family emphasis that the gospel writers may have progressively learned to use as an attraction for their audiences: “Word count shows that God is referred to as father in the Gospels with increasing frequency: 4 times in Mark, 15 in Luke, 49 in Matthew, and 109 in John. More precisely, the frequency with which Jesus calls God Father breaks down even more dramatically: Mark 1, Q [as source of Matthew and Luke]1, Luke 2, special Matthew 1, John 73” (Johnson 81).
Like the pien–wen and Manichean scriptures, John is markedly
vernacular literature. Its Koine is further from classical Greek than much of the
New Testament. Also like Manichean scriptures and the pien–wen, it contains
verse—sixty–six times according to The New Jerusalem Bible. Some of
these may be citations of hymns and thus would have had music known to its early
audiences. Its greatest contribution to popularization, however, is its poetic power
of embodying spiritual ideas in vivid visual images, e.g., the chiaroscuro of light
and darkness that dominates the initial proem.
Although the demands of popularization actually did produce some pictorial Jewish
religious art, rabbinical theology was based on an invisible God who discouraged
graphics as idolatrous. As an announcement of the Incarnation of the Word, the Gospel
of John anticipates depiction of the text in Medieval Christian “illustrations” and
“illuminations.” The terms “illustrations” and “illuminations” themselves come respectively
from l–u str–a re (to make lustrous) and l–u min–a re (to light up),
an articulate brightness eventually shining through stained–glass windows called
“paupers’ bibles.”
Decision to popularize is hardly an inevitable one. Composing learned disquisitions on the chasmal requires a discipline that gives the scholarly life its order and dignity within a single, well–defined culture. The Light of John, however, is, as Mani paraphrased it, a “flooding light,” an overpowering vision, an invitation to participate immediately in an infinite Word, transcending a lifetime of logical study. The gospel legitimizes a chaotic world of feelings and intuitions, transcending consistent expression. It seeks to cross from text into experience, for multicultural masses unsatisfied by a single language. Even in the twentieth century, according to Tom Wolfe’s book The Painted Word, the artistic community turned against illustration because it is chaotic, impure, a mixture of the separate mediums literature and painting. Confucianisms have insisted on a very exact use of Chinese and were at first wary of visual art (Whitlark 1991,173).
Imagine the ancient inhabitants of Tun–huang confronting the Johannine Incarnate Word, language visible and as alive as a lector. Although highly literate Confucianisms have little in common with this notion, Taoisms have more, and Buddhism very much, as in J. Edgar Bruns, The Christian Buddhism of St. John (1971). The Buddha’s dictum, “Whosoever sees the Dharma, sees me,” is but another instance of savior as law or sacred discourse. From the nineteenth century through Elmar Gruber’s and Holger Kersten’s The Original Jesus (1995), books have argued that the New Testament comes largely from Buddhism, whose relics occur as far west as Marseilles and whose presence was demonstrably strong in Alexandria. Conversely, Christianity has influenced Buddhism, sometimes resulting in extreme syncretism, as at the oasis of Turfan, where Buddhists and Christian Gnostics shared the same buildings and Buddha was celebrated as “the Good Shepherd Jesus” (Gruber and Kersten 237). What, however, made this conflation possible was that manuscripts had a sufficiently important and pervasive use to create analogous attitudes toward the Word made visible.
What would now be called the “butterfly effect” of language was
ubiquitous; even a single word could create immeasurable results. At John 14.14,
Jesus makes the promise, “If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” As
Werner Kelber notes, “In early Christian culture, speakers who speak in Jesus’ name
could function as carriers of his authority. The name itself was endowed with wonder–working
power.” Attempts to introduce Ch’an Buddhism and Taoism to American intellectuals
have underplayed such attitudes toward language, perhaps because they sound too Christian.
Steven Heine, for example, generalizes, “In Biblical religion, nomen (naming)
is the basis of numen (sacrality), but for Zen [Ch’an] numen is often
the absence, negation, or withholding of nomen” (Heine 207). Ch’an, however,
actually included ch’eng–ming nien–fo (“focusing the mind on the Buddhas by
calling their names”; Foulk in Ebrey and Gregory 184). Particularly important among
the Buddhas to whom prayers were addressed was that embodiment of Light, Amit–a bha.
In his commentary on the Ch’an Wumenkuan, Thomas Cleary justifies spell-like
repetitions of Amit–a bha’s name: “The sole general exception to the grave cautions
and warnings traditionally attached to the use of spells in Buddhism are those spells
used to bring to mind the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life. That Buddha represents
the reality of universal and cosmic compassion….”(Wumen 1993, 20). The most influential
Buddhist sect devoted exclusively to Amit–a bha was founded by Hui–Yüan, originally
a Taoist, who continued to use Taoist scriptures (e.g., the Chuang–tzu) “to
explain his new faith” (Eliot 156). Those scriptures insist that reality is ineffable,
seemingly the opposite of magical names. Actually, however, Christian, Taoist, and
Buddhist magical language and apophasia are ways around a scribal linearity very
important in those religions’ rivals: Judaism and Confucianism.
Tao/Word
| “Those who say do not know Those who know do not say.” Reputedly, these are Lao–tzu’s words. If they mean that Lao–tzu knew, Why did he say five thousand words? —Pai Chu–yi (ninth century C.E.) |
Despite very different religious roots (probably including Philo and Proverbs), the Gospel of John voices an insight worth comparing to this Chinese one. Not any ordinary, speakable language, but, according to John 1.3, a mysterious “Word” before it became part of the physical world was the origin of the totality: “all things were made by him” (panta di autou egeneto).
The gospel then twice contrasts with the Word the testimony of “John” (1.6–1.8, 1.15–36). Both references may be to John the Baptist or, given the way the first is separated from the latter, 1.6–1.8 could refer to the gospel’s author, John, also a testifier and one who speaks words rather than being the Word. How reliable are words as opposed to the Word? From its first line forward, the Tao Te Ching confronts the paradox that if Reality is ineffable then the text cannot completely express its subject (except, perhaps, by indirectly or paranormally inspiring some insight in the audience). For John, the Ground of Reality, God, is invisible to all people: “No man hath seen God” (1.18). Knowledge of that Reality comes from the Word, who has provided an exegesis (exegesato, 1.18)—but that explanation does not seem to be in that Gospel. Instead, it evokes the ineffable paradoxically (like the Tao Te Ching).
If his interest were in presenting Jesus’ description of the Father, John would have done so largely in the Master’s words, with only such commentary as is necessary. In contrast, unlike Matthew (or the collections of Christ’s sayings that presumably preexisted the gospels), John devotes a significantly smaller proportion of his text to quoting Jesus—and those quotations only indirectly describe the invisible Father. For John, the LORD is not so much the author of sayings about God as the Word Himself. Rather than provide a portrait of the invisible God by way of information revealed by the Son, John offers emotional identification of lectors and auditors with the Divine by way of the Word: the Son, the Son’s words, and the words of the gospel itself all merging. Believers are “children of God,” generated (egenn–e th–esan, 1.13) by the power of the Only Begotten (monogenous) Son and Word. Consequently, like any true Christian, John is also a child of God. By analogy, he and his audience are part of the Word, expected to preach the divine Reality (cf. 17.20, where the disciples unite the faithful through their “word.”). Kelber argues, “In the performance of the oral gospel [predating the written ones] the power of words is actualized, and speaker and hearer tend to converge in the message. Spoken words encourage participation in the message, not reflection on it.” Being meant for reading aloud to those wishing to be one church, the Gospel of John also may have had this uniting effect. As writing, to be read or heard in the same words over and over, there was as well reflection on details of difference—particularly distinctions of personality in a progressively literate, poly-cultural society, ambivalent about completely melting into a single tribe. Mystical union and recognition of mundane difference collide in one paradox after another. It is like the condition of a soliton, which, being part of a “far–from–equilibrium” field (yet apart from it) is both one and many.
Continue to John 2
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