The reason I hesitate to retract, however, is that there's a kind of literalism that I find very attractive and that isn't naive though it can be maddeningly hard to pin down. In Jewish tradition, the Biblical text is regarded as only the briefest, most cryptic distillation or crystalization of the infinitely vaster body of oral Torah -- the orally transmitted tradition held to go back in some of its streams to the revelation to Moses at Mt. Sinai or even earlier -- to Adam or Abraham. Much in that tradition consists of narrative threads or fragments much wilder than anything in the Bible itself.
For example? I was talking last night with my wife about the legend or myth or tradition (whatever you want to call it) that in the end of days, the righteous will enjoy a festive meal in a sukkah (tabernacle) constructed from the skin of the sea monster Leviathan. They will dine on the meat of the Leviathan.
At this image, cynics will snicker. Religious rationalists will harrumph, "Well, it's only a symbol!" I find these two responses depressing, dispiriting, empty. They're not my way.
In the Jewish Orthodox world, such traditions are contemplated in a charming but strange way, without asking if they're meant to be understood literally. Jews who are simple in their faith -- which is not a bad thing! though it's not me either -- have no problem assuming that the story is a true forecast of things to come in as literal a sense as the weather forecast that predicts autumn rain in Seattle, but even more certain.
Judaism sure appears to treat ideas like these as if they were literally true. At the end of Sukkot last week we said a farewell to the sukkah that we had spent the previous week eating and otherwise dwelling in. The formal farewell includes a reference to the future feast in the sukkah of Leviathan.
I don't know what to make of such things but I love to think about them at a level of detail that could be called literalist and that mere symbols don't usually merit. They are incredibly stirring. I hold out the hope that shimmering just beyond the edge of my ability to grasp, there lies some spiritual reality to which the "symbol" points, a quite literal reality that exceeds my power of expression as it exceeds that of human speech and writing in general.
That's not a symbol as a rationalist would hold, where the figurative image simply alludes to some drab moral or lesson or other. Is there a better word than "symbol" for what I'm grasping toward? Your thoughts, please.
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To Mark2:
I am surely confused. If what you meant was that our difference was because I'm using the Sephardic aleph-bet then I retract my claim that Baltomaggid's use of 'sof' was incorrect. On the other hand, is it not true that most of the 'standard' Hebrew Bibles use the Sephardic? I ask this honestly, because I do not actually know.
In my own library, I have 3 Hebrew Bibles and each one uses the Sephardic aleph-bet -- the BHS, the JPS version of the Tanakh, and Richard Elliott Friedman's personal translation in his book, "Commentary on the Torah". In addition, I have Bibleworks 7 in which I have access to the WTM Westminster Hebrew OT Morphology, and the WTT version of the BHS -- both of these are Sephardic.
Anyway, this is cool. I learned something today and that's always a good thing.
Cheers,
Michael
To be literal:
The Sephardi pronounciation of the letter would be "eth"
The Israeli pronounciation is "et"
The Askenazi pronounciation is "es"
it's all the same
I believe that the word you might be looking for is sacramental. But that might be to Christian with too much baggage.
I was ignorant of the Leviathan legend. But I've often wondered about the porpoise or manatee skins in the cover of the Tabernacle of Exodus. It seems clumsy but makes me think of the Red Sea Crossing, properties of water-tightness, the flood and Noah's Ark, and any number of pictures in the Scripture. As I read your description of a Leviathan tabernacle, my mind could see the perfection of a single skin, in place of the scores of smaller skins in the original, picturing thereby Union and Unification, even as feasting on the same beast's meat speak's to my Christian heart the picture of the One who Is the covering, is also the Sacrifice, the Meat, the Provision, the Container of the Family, the Temple in which we shall all be incorporated. The Book of Ephesians speaks to these topics, encouragingly addressing the Oneness of Jew and Gentile, all moving toward full realization of the Headship of the Father.
I see many of the symbols as real images of Truth, not mere convenient analogies, but actual, created pictures of Ultimate Truths, as the Tabernacle of Moses is a picture of the Eternal House of God, intended as such, but nonetheless a real artifact, not a mere literary device. I ponder how many other created things fit this pattern, whether or not I, today, accept their reality.
Finally, I believe the first two chapters of Genesis to be historical because Exodus 20 provides an eyewitness account "for in six days...". I'm a lawyer trained in engineering. I accept the testimony of a truthful builder/designer!
Of course, "Modern Biblical scholarship" will become, after a few centuries, ancient Biblical scholarship.
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