Revelation (4)–
Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
The Marriage of the Lamb
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The contemplative vision … tends to perceive both world and text as a thesaurus of signa, each with its own separate, atomistic relationship to God as auctor and Creator. The ability of each sign to function independently and point ultimately to the same divine reality helps to account … for the marked parataxis …. Images can appear in almost any order …. –Ann Astell, The Song of Songs
–Ritsema and Karcher, I Ching, Hexagram 51 |
Whether orally or in writing, the struggle with obscure discourse is toward unity, but what gives it interest and excitement is at least partly the degree of challenge, i.e., the extent of the obscurity. Roland Barthes believed that challenge stimulated a jouissance, a sexual pleasure of reading. Perhaps ancient Greek agrees, for its word entunkhanein means both to read and have sexual intercourse (Syenbro 86). The pun is like the Biblical yada–to know both intellectually and carnally. In view of the jouissance of reading, God as Auctor becomes allegorically also Lover, contacted through the text that brings one into Revelation’s marriage of the Lamb. Even the Rabbinic designation for inspired literature–that which “renders the hands unclean”–whatever its historic origin, sounds as if the holy is under some such taboo as usually surrounds the sexual in ancient cultures. (Not only when Revelation was written but into the fourth century, there were still Christians who continued the Jewish practice of washing the hands after Bible reading. Fox, in Bowman and Woolf 140. They also refrained from sex before touching scripture; Fox in Bowman and Wolf 140.)
As one of its organizing principles, the Book of Revelation contrasts pure and impure sexuality. Prime image of the latter is the whore of Babylon, with a mysterious name upon her forehead and blasphemies written on the beast she rides (17.3—5). The two of them are a living text. Making the world drunk with the wine of her fornications (17.2), she stands as antithesis to Hochma, who inspires the world with her pure wine. The contrast is like that between Lady Folly and Lady Wisdom in Proberbs 9. In Revelation, the latter’s embodiment is the Heavenly Jerusalem personified as Bride (20.8, 21.2), dressed in the good deeds of the saints (as if those acts were written upon her).
Near the end of Revelation, she becomes a voice of the text, addressed to its hearers: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come’.… I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (22.17—19). Salvation is through the book, whose integrity must be maintained at least until the people arrive. That “book” associates together the heavenly Tree of Life, the Book of Revelation, and the Holy City, i.e., the New Jerusalem or Bride. Her voice joins with the Spirit because one of her manifestations is in the text that the Spirit inspires. Her function resembles that of the “celestial fiancée” in shamanic initiations:
The initiation proper… consists in the candidate’s triumphant journey to the sky [to which Jesus has risen in Revelation]. … the popular festivities on this occasion … resemble those of a wedding … But the role of the celestial bride appears to be secondary; it is no more than that of the shaman’s helper and inspirer (Eliade, Shamanism 76.).
Although their relationships are not charted with the precision a modern theologian might like, Revelation overflows with binary pairings: Whore and Bride, Christ and Anti—Christ, the two beasts, and so on. Even more important in this late work, however, are sevens: seven sections, each divided in seven (Ford 46-48). Those divisions range from the almost inevitable to the quite problematic, the latter leading the Anchor Bible commentary to argue that the original structure was “Six Series of Six” (Ford 48-50). This does not mean, however, that no ancient ever thought of a more purely binary pattern.
More rigorous, the earliest form of the I Ching (attributed to King Fu Hsi) employs a rudimentary version of what mathematicians call a “segregation diagram.” It shows primordial oneness dividing into yin and yang, that two into four and so on. Its anticipation of binary numbers impressed Leibniz so much that he assumed God must have revealed it to the Chinese (Huangs 41). However, the Chinese themselves prefer the chaotic King Wen order, the one in all “standard” editions (Huangs 32). “[Because it was revealed to him,] the present arrangement of hexagrams and appended judgments were more than mere products of human wisdom but the revelations of higher reality” (Lee 14). Attempts to find methodical meaning in this arrangement are so far more ingenious than convincing (Huangs 32).
The Chinese preference for the more complex organization of the King Wen version is analogous to the situation of the Book of Revelation. Both works manifest a fascination with symbolical numbers yet do not subordinate themselves to an entirely consistent mathematical arrangement. Consistency would eliminate their highly paratactic styles by subordinating their idiosyncratic images absolutely to some overall design.
The parataxis, however, is essential. Only by being at least partly independent of one another can the images achieve maximum vividness. Readers must focus on them one by one, experiencing the nightmare— or dreamlike resonances, not think of them as mere segments of a coherent narrative. As with the conjunctions of Genesis that are often copulative in more than one sense, the obscure parataxis of scriptural dreams may have sensuous or even sensual affects (e.g., the Song of Songs), especially if the violence of such works as Revelation is an allied stimulation. What is most primary seems to be pairs of words. As analysis breaks texts apart, these are the last to dissolve. Faced with the elusive patterns of scriptures, readers cross into mystery, desire some human personality to give meaning to the “chaos,” undergo a sacrifice of old notions, and find themselves in the jouissance. Revelation calls this the marriage of the Lamb–an image deliberately shocking in its allegorical bestiality. The Lamb, however, is not a lamb; the Bride is not a bride. Consequently their paradoxical conjunction can stand for a new, inspired state of mind.
In the Ming—oi shrine near Tun-huang, murals show scenes of writing, notably one where an apsara (nymph) brings a brush to an older monk teaching younger ones, each poised over his paper (Whitfield and Farrer 178). The theme is that perennial one of sacred composition: inspiration being attested for the benefit of the audience, not merely to convince them but, in extreme cases to excite them as by scantily clad beauty. The apsara (one of the “daughters of joy”; Fischer-Schreiber et al 16) arrives unseen by the celibate monks; only the picture’s viewers observe her. From the time of muses and their counterparts (e.g., the Egyptian goddess Seshat, Buddhist Prajñaparamita, Hindu V—a c, Biblical Hochmah) throughout the whole tradition of inspiration, it is primarily the audience to be inspired. St. Bernard, a mystical author of medieval commentaries on the bible, “might have a presentiment before or memory thereafter, but never sensed the coming of the “Word” (Verbum) at the time it visited him as husband to bride” (Astell 1989, 100). His conjunction with the divine is erotic, but he is unaware of the relationship, except as later memory or imagining, to which he comes as spectator not participant.
His visionary commentaries–to which Ann Astell in the above passage
ascribes parataxis–abound in sensuous images, but their conjunctions with one or
another or the divine are surprisingly vague. Ultimately, the eroticism is for the
audience to discover; it is Barthes’ jouissance, a very active wrestling with
the naked text. Despite the tendency of commentaries toward linearity, one should
not be surprised that some hearers or readers find them multi—sensory and erotic.
.R gveda 10.71, for example, states: “[scripture] reveals itself like a loving and
well adorned wife to her husband” (Staal 5—6). Comparably, in sixteenth—century kabbalah,
“… the spiritualized women in mystic romances were often the very texts that the
mystics studied. Following earlier kabbalistic exegesis, Alkabez composed a commentary
on the Song of Songs [Ayelet Ahavim ], which interpreted it as an erotic dialogue
between the Torah and its mystical lover” (Solomon Alkabez, Ayelet Ahavim,
reprint, Jerusalem, 1973; Green 1988, 145). A manual of that period, Eliezer Askari’s
Sefer Haredim (Book of the Anxious), proclaims: “Behold the Torah, she is
the wife God has given thee … and the other wife is of flesh and blood.… The King,
blessed be he, commanded us to love her [too], but the real love should be for the
former” (Eliezer Azkari, Sefer haredim, pr. 7, chap. 4). Revelation is the
marriage of the Word to the Ecclesia, the Church gathered to hear that Word. The
I Ching is the marriage of yin and yang, manifest through hexagrams
and text. The reading of each is (among so many other things) nuptial and consummation.
(Con)summation
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I asked him why he thought the key to the sequence of crimes lay in the Book of Revelation. He looked at me, amazed: “The book of John offers the key to everything!” –Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
–Henderson, John B. Scripture, Canon, and Commentary |
It is also God: “ And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Rev. 21:22). Further, the Temple is a place in heaven from which the wrath of God flows to the earth as elsewhere it comes from scrolls (Rev. 15.5—8). It contains the ark of the covenant, itself the container of scripture–a potential mise en abîme. “Lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail” characterize it (Rev. 11.19), for as floating metaphor, it is a place of transformation and change.
On 4 February 1993, the Today Show prayed for higher ratings by faxing God. Israel’s national telephone company delivered the fax to the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, the last remnant of the Temple. There, it joined hundreds of devotional faxes with other prayers, including a five—page supplication in Chinese sent from mainland China. Suddenly, the literal Temple became almost as accessible world wide as a Bible. Indeed, the old sacrifices may begin again:
Some activist—believers devote all their time and energies to specialization in those parts of the Torah which pertain to Temple worship–such as ritual purity and sacrifice–and are preparing themsevles to serve as priests. Others exploit various opportunities to deceive the police and the Wqqf (Moslem Religious Trust) and penetrate the well-guarded Temple Mount area, pray there, and wave the Israeli flag. During Passover of 1989, they planned to smuggle parts of the altar inside, assemble them, and offer a sacrifice to God. There are also those who encircle the Temple Mount during the Jewish Festivals, carrying Torah scrolls and binoculars, attempting to capture details of the remnants and to determine the precise location of that room which could be entered only by the High Priest and only once a year (there is a fear that others might violate this awesome prohibition and accidentally trespass on the site); Marty and Appleby 1991, 318).
In an age of on—line Bibles, computerized I Chings, and religious faxes, sacred writing is self—consciously entering a new age, but fascination with the new is itself old. According to the Zohar, every new interpretation of Torah creates a new heaven. The Book of Revelation promises a new heaven and new earth with imagery from Isaiah, which is of course playing with the images of Genesis. Fascination with re-experiencing creation from chaos has ever increasing appeal. A legend arose in the Renaissance that, in 1000 C.E., Christendom had taken Revelation very seriously (Schwarz 4). Nothing equal to this panic ever occurred. It is what a later age thought ought to have happened. Hillel Schwartz’s Century’s End documents an almost constantly intensifying preoccupation with the end and new beginning. The pattern is particularly striking because, during that period, religion otherwise declined in power and prestige.
This anomaly might mean that apocalypticism served, from the Renaissance to the present day, as a focus for what Eric Toffler has called “future shock.” Behind this growing terror at approaching chaos were accelerating changes in values, political systems, and technology, intertwined with evolution of the media. Furthermore, that evolution from manuscript, to print, to telecommunications has increased data about change and consequently angst from it. Although certainly not the first apocalypse, Revelation, by its influence stands at the fountainhead of this flood–or, perhaps one might better see the Bible collectively as that source. Revelation conceives of itself as a consummation of biblical prophecy and also of the very idea of a Holy Book–a transcendent communication whose “far—from—equilibrium” images are expected to move magically into phenomenal existence, springing forth from the Scrolls of God. Even if Revelation has roots in an L3 vindictiveness, its message of vast change has been evolving from interpretation to interpretation into our own age of ecological and political crisis, when it may be recognized as a foreshadowing of turmoil so vast L8 (if it is possible) may be the only answer.
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