His
new interest consumed him completely, which surprised me. Long acquaintance
with Professor Lowenman had accustomed me to his mental habits. He would burst
into my office (in the manner so described above) waving either a sheaf of
papers on which he’d scribbled notes culled from his reading, and sometimes he
would bring in the entire book. He would then proceed to rave on and on about
his new topic, the way a more mundanely-minded man will rave on an on about a
new acquisition, say, a car, for example. He would then proceed to pepper me
with questions about it, but never allow me to answer completely. Instead, he
would answer himself, then question his own answers, and then draw his own
conclusions.
I was never any help to him at all
as he worked out these questions and answers. I was there more as a sounding
board, an opportunity for him to ask questions to someone aside from himself. I
was a spectator of the debates he waged with himself.
Then, abruptly, he would drop his
new area of interest and move on to something else.
So I fully expected him to work this
new obsession out of his system within a matter of days, or perhaps a week or
two. But it did not. Instead, it began to preoccupy him almost completely.
He assembled dozens of examples
where the practice or theology of Judaism had been influenced by Christianity,
and vice versa, and he committed each new example or anecdote to another piece
of paper.
To wit:
LP-ex. 4
When the blade touched his
neck, the soul of Isaac fled and departed, but when he heard God’s voice from
between the two angels, saying to Abraham, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, his
soul returned to his body and Abraham set him free, and Isaac stood upon his
feet. And Isaac knew that in this way the dead in the future will be brought
back to life. He spoke and said: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who quickens the
dead.”[1]
LP-ex. 5
One good example of this kind of midrashic
revision of the text is found in several late midrashim about the Akedah, the
Binding of Isaac. In the biblical account in Genesis 22, Abraham is about to
slay Isaac, when, at the last minute, the angel of the Lord tells him, Lay not
thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him (Gen. 22:12). It is
clear from the text that Isaac was not sacrificed. But these late midrashim
turn to the end of Genesis 22, where Abraham returned unto his young men (Gen.
22:19) where there is no mention of Isaac, and, noting Isaac’s absence, they
offer a midrashic revision of the original tale, in which Abraham does
sacrifice Isaac, and Isaac’s soul ascends to heaven. There he is shown all of Paradise , and, in some versions, studies for three years
in the heavenly Academy
of Shem Paradise , Isaac’s soul returns to this world and he comes
back to life, having been resurrected.
This is a radical and probably Christian-inspired legend. The three
years Isaac’s soul spent in Paradise strongly
echoes the resurrection of Jesus on the third day.[2]
(Emphasis Lowenman’s.) (Ed.; Baghatch)
“You
don’t know, my dear Baghatch,” he said, after showing me some of these papers,
“how deliciously disturbing this is,” and he giggled madly.
“Why so?”
I asked.
“This is out of the Talmud, man,” he trilled. “This is out
of the Holy Tradition. The holiest of Holy Books. The most Jewish of the
Jewish. Just think of it, Christian theology affecting the way the ancient Jews
interpreted the Bible. Fascinating. If my grandfather had seen this, he would
have had a heart attack and keeled over. He did anyhow, but not because of
this.”
“Why does it delight you so?” I
wondered aloud. “You seem positively gleeful about this discovery.”
“Haven’t you answered your own
question?” he countered. “It’s discovery. That’s what makes me happy.”
“But it seems to be an attack upon
your own tradition,” I protested. “And as you said, many individuals of the
Mosaic persuasion, your own late grandfather included, would be positively
appalled at this, yet it doesn’t seem to affect you in the least. Or rather,
you glory in it.”
“I’m not particularly religious,” he
said nonchalantly. “Frankly, it doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m not worried
about weakening the supports of a four-thousand year-old religion. But
religious agendas aside, isn’t it interesting? You would have thought that
Judaism had existed in a vacuum, to hear the rabbis describe it. Not so. There
have been, it appears, many outside influences upon it, not the least including
that of its bastard child and greatest enemy, Christianity.”
“But what does it prove to you?” I
pressed. “Is that so unusual? Many different traditions have been influenced by
other traditions. Why is this so interesting?”
He shrugged.
“Perhaps because it affects me
personally,” he admitted. “And also because I loathe the smugness of the truly
devout. Those who will insist that only they have the map to a happy afterlife.
I doubt that I would ever shove the results of my research under their
noses—not that they would believe me even after they read my work, people only
believe what they want to believe—but it gives me a certain satisfaction to
know that I am in the right, and they are in the wrong. Beyond which, isn’t it
amusing to think of these two great religions, which have been, for the most
part, at each other’s throats for the last two thousand years, affecting each
other in such an influential manner? We have seen the enemy, and he is us. I
think Commodore Farragut said that. Or perhaps it’s a paraphrase of the
original statement by Pogo the Possum. Yes, that’s it. Farragut said, ‘We have
seen the enemy, and he is ours.’ It was Pogo the Possum who said, ‘We have seen
the enemy, and he is us.’”
“Certainly,” I pointed out, “the
exchange has not been entirely one-sided. Certainly your people must have
influenced the Christians as well.”
“In so many ways,” he smiled
toothily, shoving another piece of paper at me. “Read on.”
LP-ex. 6
Later in the century,
however, new heretics appeared, known as the Judaizers. Their radical religious
movement has been linked to the arrival in Novgorod Moscow
“That’s just one of about a million
examples I’ve found,” he said, taking the piece of paper back from me and
stuffing it inside his jacket pocket. “The others include the Christian
kabbalists, Johannes Reuchlin and Meister Eckhart and all the other mystics who
turned not to the Christian mystical tradition, but to the Jewish one. There
has been significant crossover and cross-influences on both by the other. By
the way,” he added, “I was dreadfully wrong.”
“You were? Concerning what?”
“You remember, the other day, when I
said that the question of ecstatic ascent into heaven was a particularly
Christian idea? Well, it’s not.”
“You don’t say,” I said.
“I do say,” he said. “Apparently,
there is quite a long-standing school of Jewish mysticism that uses ecstasy to
ascend to Heaven. It’s called merkabah. The Merkabah was the mystical chariot
that the prophet Ekeziel witnessed. There have been Jewish mystics since the
time of the Apocrypha who have claimed to have ascended to Heaven using
merkabah mysticism. Apparently, Saint
Paul
LP-ex. 7
It is doubtless not
profitable for me to boast. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not
know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a
man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—how he was
caught up into Paradise and heard
inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such a one I
will boast; yet of myself I will not boast, except in my infirmities. For
though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool; for I will speak the
truth. But I refrain, lest anyone should think of me above what he sees me to
be or hears from me.
And lest I should be exalted
above measure by the abundance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given
to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure.
Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart
from me. And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, My strength is
made perfect in weakness.”[4]
LP-ex. 8
In merkabah mysticism the
voyager often speaks as though he is actually going from place to place in
heaven, yet we know from the frame narratives that the adept’s body is on
earth, where his utterances are being questioned and written down by a group of
disciples. Paul speaks at a time before these distinctions were clear or
accepted by his community. He is not sure whether the ascent took place in the
body or out of it.
…Under what terms could a
credible journey to heaven take place? Modern sensibilities balk at the notion
of physical transport to heaven, whereas a heavenly journey in vision or trance
is credible. When a heavenly journey is described literally, the cause may be
literary convention or the belief of the voyager; when reconstructing the
actual experience, only one type can pass modern standards of credibility.
Paul’s confusion over the nature of his ecstatic journey to heaven provides a rare
insight into first-century thinking, since it demonstrates either a
disagreement in the community or more likely a first-century mystic’s inability
to distinguish between bodily and spiritual journeys. Our world no longer
supports his quandary; nor did the ancient world shortly after Paul’s time.
They adopted the Platonic notion of the soul, which answered the question
sufficiently for them and which still informs religious life today. Paul,
however, conceived his journey without a developed concept of the soul. Thus,
he is apparently describing a mystical notion of the spiritual body that is
received by and finds residence in Christ.
…With only the most general
hints about Paul’s conversion in his own writing, we must fill in the Jewish
cultural context informing his experience. Ezekiel 1 was one of the central
scriptures that Luke, and Paul, used to understand Paul’s conversion. The
vision of the Throne-Chariot of God in Ezekiel 1, with its attendant
description of Glory (Kavod), God’s glory or form, for the human figure, is a
central image of Jewish mysticism… the name Merkabah—that is, throne-chariot
mysticism, which is the usual Jewish designation for these mystical traditions
as early as the mishnaic period… is the rabbinic term for the heavenly conveyance
described in Ezekiel 1…
Exactly which parts of
merkabah speculation were understood [in the first century] is unclear. In this
general atmosphere, Paul is an important witness to the kind of experience that
Jews were reporting and an important predecessor to merkabah mysticism. [5]
“Now
then,” he said, after I had finished reading Saint Paul ’s rather cryptic and terse account
of his journey to the heavens, “take a look at the bit which must have started
off the Merkabah mysticism.”
“Which, I
suppose,” I sighed, “is Ekeziel, Chapter One.”
“Precisely.”
LP-ex. 9
In the thirtieth year, on
the fifth day of the fourth month, when I was in the community of exiles by the
Chebar Canal
I looked, and lo, a stormy
wind came sweeping out of the north—a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded
by a radiance; and in the center of it, in the center of the fire, a gleam as
of amber. In the center of it were also the figures of four creatures. And this
was their appearance:
They had the figures of
human beings. However, each had four faces, and each of them had four wings;
the legs of each were fused into a single rigid leg, and the feet of each were
like a single calf’s hoof; and their sparkle was like the luster of burnished
bronze. They had human hands below their wings. The four of them had their
faces and their wings on their four sides. Each one’s wings touched those of
the other. They did not turn when they moved; each could move in the direction
of any of their faces.
Each of them had a human
face (at the front); each of the four had the face of a lion on the right; each
of the four had the face of an ox on the left; and each of the four had the
face of an eagle [at the back]. Such were their faces. As for their wings, they
were separated: above, each had two touching those of the others, while the
other two covered its body. And each could move in the direction of any of its
faces; they went wherever the spirit compelled them to go, without turning when
they moved.
Such then was the appearance
of the creatures. With them was something that looked like burning coals of
fire. This fire, suggestive of torches, kept moving about among the creatures;
the fire had a radiance, and lighting issued from the fire. Dashing to and fro [among]
the creatures was something that looked like flares.
As I gazed on the creatures,
I saw one wheel on the ground next to each of the four-faced creatures. As for
the appearance and structure of the wheels, they gleamed like beryl. All four
had the same form; the appearance and structure of each was as of two wheels
cutting through each other. And when they moved, each could move in the
direction of any of its four quarters; they did not veer when they moved. Their
rims were tall and frightening, for the rims of all four were covered all over
with eyes. And when the creatures moved forward, the wheels moved at their
sides; and when the creatures were borne above the earth, the wheels were borne
too. Wherever the spirit impelled them to go, they went—wherever the spirit
impelled them—and the wheels were borne alongside them—for the spirit of the
creatures was in the wheels.
Above the heads of the
creatures was a form: an expanse, with an awe-inspiring gleam as of crystal,
was spread out above their heads. Under the expanse, each had one pair of wings
extended toward those of the other; and each had another pair covering its
body. When they moved, I could hear the sound of their wings like the sound of
mighty waters, like the sound of Shaddai, a tumult like the din of an army.
When they stood still, they would let their wings droop. From above the expanse
over their heads came a sound. When they stood still, they would let their
wings droop.
Above the expanse over their
heads was the semblance of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and on top,
upon this semblance of a throne, there was the appearance of a human form. From
what appeared as his loins up, I saw a gleam as of amber—what looked like a
fire encased in a frame; and from what appeared as his loins down, I saw what
looked like fire. There was a radiance all about him. Like the appearance of
the bow which shines in the clouds on a day of rain, such was the appearance of
the surrounding radiance. That was the appearance of the semblance of the presence
of the Lord. When I beheld it, I flung myself down on my face. And then I heard
the voice of someone speaking.[6]
“So
that’s the Merkabah?” I asked.
“Indeed,” he answered. “The
Merkabah, the mystical half-throne, half-chariot upon which God Almighty sits.
Merkabah mysticism is very interesting. Very interesting indeed.”
“How so?”
Lowenman settled himself on my chair
and crossed his legs as though settling in for a long discussion.
“Well,” he began conversationally,
“the idea of Merkabah mysticism is that, through some kind of ecstatic
experience, one can actually gain access to the presence of God Himself. Now,
before the rabbis had had access to Greek philosophy—that is, Plato’s
conception of the soul as a separate, discrete entity, one’s consciousness, so
to speak—the idea was that one was actually transported to the heavenly
spheres. Bodily. Physically. The prophet Ezekiel certainly seemed to think that
he, bodily, had been in the presence of God. Now, Greek philosophy holds that
there is a clear division between body and soul, a division that is lacking in
early Jewish theology. It’s a theory that has affected all three of the great
monotheistic religions—mine, yours, and Islam.”
“I am only nominally a Christian,” I
protested, “as I assumed that you are only nominally a Jew. I didn’t think you
were religious.”
“Well, I don’t pray three times a
day, separate my milk and meat dishes, and check my clothes for unclean
combinations of linen and wool, as my forebears before me did,” Lowenman
pointed out. “Nonetheless, I don’t entirely disavow the possibility that God
may exist. What about you?”
“I’ve never given the matter much
thought,” I replied sheepishly.
“Neither had I,” Lowenman said. “I’d
pretty much dismissed any speculations about the un-knowable. The spiritual
world, that is. How can one know what can’t be seen, or felt, or experienced
sensually? The world is big enough for you and I, Baghatch, no spirits need
apply. Or so I should have thought. But where was I?”
“Plato’s conception of the…”
“Soul, yes indeed, the soul. Plato
held that the soul and the body were two separate things. The rabbis of the
Hellenic period, and their Christian successors, tried to merge Greek and
Jewish philosophy, and in some ways they were successful. Some of the tenets
are compatible. Plato’s belief in the One, the Indivisible, the Good, the
Unmoved Mover. One could argue, on the basis of statements like that, that
Plato was himself monotheistic. The concept of the Unmoved Mover dovetails
quite neatly with monotheism. And so other Greek ideas, like the idea of the
soul as a separate entity from the body, crept into Judaism and thence to
Christianity. The whole point is, that when you separate the soul and the body,
the idea of bodily transport to the presence of the Divine is difficult to
swallow, but it’s entirely possible that your soul, on its own, might do so.
Segal is quite illuminating on that point. And apparently, Saint Paul
“Aha,” I pointed out, “but the
Merkabah mystics…”
“Exactly, Baghatch!” Lowenman
grinned, shooting his long index finger into the air triumphantly. “Exactly!
The Merkabah mystics believed that one could actually, physically, bodily,
ascend to Heaven and to the presence of God!”
Something about his enthusiasm for
this disturbed me, but I couldn’t precisely put my finger on it.
“I am afraid, Lowenman,” I said,
after a pause, “that I cannot completely understand your enthusiasm for this
subject. I should have thought that you would have been satisfied in proving
your point.”
A bewildered look washed over his
narrow features. He took off his glasses, puffed on the lenses, polished them
on the tattered tail of his shirt, and put them back on.
“What was my point again?” he asked.
“You started this whole inquiry,” I
said crisply, “as an investigation into the possible influences both Judaism
and Christianity had on each other.”
He scratched his head.
“Yes, I suppose I did, didn’t I?” he
said mildly.
“Well,” I continued, “haven’t you
proved your point? That yes, indeed, there has been significant influence on
both religions by the other, starting with Saint Paul and continuing until the
eighteenth century and possibly beyond?”
“I suppose I have at that,” he mused. “Clever of me, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose I have at that,” he mused. “Clever of me, wasn’t it?”
“And now,” I continued relentlessly,
“don’t you think it’s time you dropped it and moved on to something else?”
He suddenly sat up straight in the
chair and fixed me with his sharp blue eyes.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“Isn’t that the way of it?” I asked.
“Isn’t that your general modus operandii? You get fascinated by something,
figure it out to your satisfaction, add another body of knowledge to your
already-formidable arsenal of brainpower, and move on to something else. What’s
the hold-up here? Shouldn’t you have moved on to, to, I don’t know, whether or
not the Cherokees are in fact the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes, or, or,
if the Kama Sutra influenced the course of French erotic literature, or if
there really is a Loch Ness Monster?”
He looked hurt.
“’Pon my soul, Baghatch,” he said,
“are you implying that I am, in fact, a dilettante?”
“Well, isn’t that the general
impression?” I asked. “Talk to Portlehart. Talk to Midgewater. Talk to your
champion Fotherfield. I would guess that all of them would describe you as a
dilettante.”
He stared amazed at me, as though
finally seeing me for the first time.
“And what about you, Baghatch?” he
asked. “What would you describe me as?”
Suddenly I was abashed at the
harshness of my diatribe, which had surprised me as much as him. I was angry at
him, but I didn’t know why. I decided to back off a bit.
“I wouldn’t say a dilettante,” I
began in the conciliatory manner of one who knows that he is in the wrong, but
feels compelled to defend his prior statements, so as not to appear an utter
fool, “but you must admit, there is a certain… lack of focus in your career, is
there not?”
“Focus?”
“Well, I mean, for God’s sake,
Lowenman,” I said, “you’ve hopped from Caucasian folktales to pre-Hindu Indian
narratives to Pico della Mirandola to evolutionary recidivism…”
“I was right about evolutionary
recidivism, wasn’t I?” he interrupted. “How else to explain the fingers on the
wing of the hoatzin-bird chick?”
“…to the political structure of the
Mongols prior to Genghis Khan to whether or not the quark has its own internal
structure to the question of whether Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal man did the
cave-painting at Lascaux, and now to this… this latest business! Yes, there are
elements of the dilettante about your career!”
“So what?”
“So what?” I said, flabbergasted,
“so what? Well, yes, indeed, so what! Why should anyone stick to one thing?
That’s a fine question, Lowenman, a fine question! Why should anyone attempt
mastery over just one subject?”
He
blinked slowly.
“Do I detect,” he said finally, “a
note of sarcasm in your voice?”
“You may do more than detect it,” I informed him through
gritted teeth. “You may be positively sure
that it is there, and beyond that, it is more than a note. It is an entire
musical score. It is the Rachmaninoff Fifth Piano Concerto of sarcasm.”
“But why, Baghatch?” he protested.
“This, coming from you? You’re the last person I should have expected it from!
Why, wasn’t… wasn’t the entire Department of Esoterics our joint creation?
Wasn’t that why we started the whole thing?”
“You started it,” I snapped. “I was
dragged along. I was happy to have a lovely wood-paneled office in the Van
Palterpelt building. But, had I received the respect which I felt I merited, I
would have been more than content to remain in the Department of History.”
“What!” he shouted, aghast. “You
would have wanted to spend the rest of your days chortling over port with Portlehart?
You would have been content to let McQuiddle drone on and on about the role of
the descendants of James Oglethorpe in the Battle of Concord? You would have
been happy listening to Bjorkenssen rattle on and on about Njorl’s Saga?”
“Why not?” I said. “Dedicated
historians, all of them, assiduously adding to the great body of knowledge by
concentrating on their… own… particular… areas… of specialization. Why do you
denigrate them?”
He drew himself up as though he had
been mortally offended.
“I,” he informed me haughtily, “am
NOT denigrating them. I have, on the contrary, the highest regard for them. But
they are limited, you see, Baghatch! They do not cross the line of their own
particular discipline!”
“And what are you doing?” I
demanded. “You, who rage recklessly through the lines separating the
disciplines, you who careen madly and drunkenly through the guardrails of
academia? They have all made their contributions to the great body of
knowledge, to humankind’s great storehouse of learning about itself and the
universe in which it lives! What have you done?”
“I thought you knew,” he said. “I
have been trying to unify it.”
“What!”
“I’m trying to bring all of these
tiny little sparks of light back together,” he muttered. “I look at what we have
learned, we humans, and with each advance, each book, each tiny bit of truth
uncovered from an obscure cosmos, I see a tiny spark of flame in the vast, dark
ocean of ignorance. But I see them burning alone. And I want to bring them
together, put them together, to create, out of this multitude of tiny lights, a
great burning bonfire! To uncover the reasons for it all! My own contributions?
My books? They are but piffle. They are tiny. They are miscroscopic. They are
to the body of human knowledge microbes in the great living swamp of what we
have learned. I should hope that my real contribution, Baghatch, was to forge
paths between isolated patches of what we know, bring them together, bring them
to bear on each other!”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“And I thought,” he concluded in a
small, hurt voice, “I thought that you were a willing conspirator in that great
undertaking. The rest of them? Little minds, little men and women, more wedded
to their own discipline than to the idea of learning. Limited. Stuck. Unwilling
to look beyond their own areas of specialization. But you, Baghatch, in you I
thought I’d detected a kindred spirit.”
I was suddenly horribly ashamed of
myself, and regretted my outburst.
“I…” I stammered, “I hate to
disappoint you, Lowenman, but… well. I think you may have misread me. I have no
ambitions like that. Nothing so grand. In fact, I am just the opposite. I
should have been happy studying Late-Early-Modern Central European Renaissance
Thought until I could happily retire to the Baghatch country home on South Palakitansak
Bay
Lowenman looked at me, then at the
walls of my office, the floor, the ceiling, and finally at his shoes.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Well. My
apologies. I didn’t mean… good God, what a distraction I must have been to you.
What a nuisance. Always bursting in at inopportune times. Always brandishing
some new little nugget that, apparently, didn’t interest you in the least.
Well. Dreadfully sorry, Baghatch. Shan’t bother you.”
He jammed his long dexterous fingers
in the frayed-edged pockets of his baggy gray flannel trousers and turned to
walk out.
I felt like a heel.
“Lowenman,” I called, “really, it’s…
it’s not at all like that. Not really. Not a bit of it. I overstated the case.
Some of it was actually rather interesting.”
He turned, his hand on the doorknob
of my office, and peered back at me as if I was a strange dog who might either
attack him or lick his fingers.
“Really?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I must say, I
particularly enjoyed the bit about the hoatzin-bird.”
“Liked that, did you?” he asked, and
grinned a small, cautious grin.
“Well, and who could fail to be
interested in that?” I assured him. “A chick, born with fingers? And which uses
its fingers to scramble like a lizard through the jungle foliage? Well, now,
that is rather interesting.”
“I always thought so,” he said,
sitting back down. “Baghatch, have you felt this way for a long time?”
“What way?”
“Annoyed by me and my various
pursuits,” he clarified.
“Annoyed
is, really, too strong a word,” I demurred. “Bewildered works well. Overwhelmed is appropriate as well. Annoyed?
No, never annoyed. But I suppose that you’ve bewildered and overwhelmed me for…
well, since we became acquainted. An occurrence, which,” I hastened to add, “I
have never for a moment regretted.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then,”
he said, sounding relieved. “But I wonder that you chose this particular… that
today, of all days… well, that you chose now to lose your temper at me. Was it
that you have reached your boiling point, only now, after ten years of
acquaintance, or was it the present subject of my investigations which
infuriated you?”
“Oh, certainly not,” I said without
thinking. “No, not in the least, not that. It was just…”
“They didn’t seem to bother you,” he
pressed, “until we’d reached the subject of God.”
“God?”
“God. Don’t act as though you’ve
never heard the name before.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Perhaps. I
don’t really want to…”
“What’s the objection?” he demanded.
“Why does the topic of God make you nervous?”
“God doesn’t make me nervous,” I
laughed nervously.
“Well, He ought to,” Lowenman said
flatly. “Didn’t you read that description of Ezekiel’s? Poor man, he said he
flung himself to the ground. Must have been terrified. And he was a priest no
less, precisely the sort of occupation one expects to have a little more
sang-froid in the face of God. Imagine what we should do if He suddenly showed
up here. Ezekiel the priest fell down. We, on the other hand, two middle-aged
university professors, neither of us particularly pious, we should probably
lose control of our bodily functions and gibber for a bit before dying of
shock. Should the good Lord choose to honor us with His presence.”
“Well, I’m not nervous,” I said
nervously. “I just don’t think that God… I just… well, it’s not a topic in
which I have much interest.”
“As if you were interested in the
hoatzin-bird and its fingers!” he laughed. “No, you politely sat through all my
lectures about Aboriginal myths, the relation of chess to one’s spatial
conception of music, and whether or not Freud was affected by Rousseau, but
when God comes into the picture, you got terribly nervous. Nervous enough to
snap at me. I wonder why that is.”
“My dear Lowenman…”
“I suppose it’s possible that it is
just a culture-clash,” he mused, the expression in his eyes, usually sharp, now
dreamy and glazed over. He wasn’t talking to me now. He was talking to himself.
“You’re high-WASP, that profoundly odd ethnic group that assiduously avoids
mention of either religion or politics in the name of good manners, thus
limiting your topics of conversation to weather and sports. And in my culture,
of course, a fight about religion and/or politics is our way of saying ‘good
morning.’ It’s possible that I stepped over the bounds of your sub-conscious
culturally-imposed definitions of good taste and propriety, but I don’t think
so.”
“What then?” I asked patiently.
“I think,” he said, his eyes slowly
coming back into focus as he swiveled his head in my direction, “that there is
a definite difference in how people react to mention of God. The pious, the
devoted, get a sort of dreamy, satisfied look on their face whenever He’s
mentioned. As if they’d just had a particularly satisfying bout of coitus. The
atheists, at the other end of the spectrum, just laugh. But people like
yourself, somewhere in the middle, unconvinced of either His existence or
nonexistence, you get nervous and irritable.”
“Do you know, Lowenman,” I said, “I
think that’s true. I think you’re exactly right. I grew up Episcopalian, of
course…”
“Naturally…”
“We did, however, have some cousins
who were rumored to have converted to Presbyterianism, but they were always
considered black sheep, you know, eccentric—but yes, I wouldn’t call myself
either pious or atheist. I suppose I’d always considered myself a… a
Jeffersonian deist.”
“Convenient,” he said. “A nice
middle-ground. It frees one from the constraints which religion places upon us,
but it doesn’t go so far that it becomes uncomfortable.”
“It seems uncomfortable now,” I
confessed. Having lost my temper, and then regained some kind of conversational
equilibrium, I felt as though I was now freer to speak.
“I think that’s how it works,” he
said. “Jeffersonian deism, the last refuge of the lazy American. You refuse to
toss God completely out the window, just in case He exists. But you don’t like
to think about it. Perhaps you’re doing something wrong. Perhaps the religious
ones, in spite of their infuriating traits, have it right. Perhaps there
actually is a World to Come, an afterlife, and you’re condemning yourselves to
hell, through your own apathy. So it’s uncomfortable. So you avoid the topic
and bury your head like an ostrich in the sand of Jeffersonian deism, and then
when actually confronted with the question of God, you get angry, because it
forces you to take your head out of that comfortable sand.”
“Well, and where do you put
yourself?” I asked, because he was striking uncomfortably close, and I was
again becoming agitated.
“Me?” he said. “I have absolutely no
idea. I don’t know, but I refuse to bury my head in the sand. I want to know. I figure, if there is a God, well,
there must be something out there.
Some proof of His existence written somewhere.”
“So that’s what it’s all about, eh?”
I said, narrowing my eyes shrewdly. “All the studying… the Department of
Esoterics… it’s all a front for your search for God, is that it?”
“What else?” he asked, as if the
answer should have been obvious. “What greater question could there be? What
else could tie together the whole knotty problem of existence? If there is a
God, then there is reason for existence. And if there isn’t, then it’s all
meaningless, isn’t it? And we’re just a cosmic accident, authorless, pointless,
a reasonless, rudderless race of accidentally-evolved organisms floating slowly
through time and space on a rock.”
“I wish you luck,” I said, shaking
my head. “It’s too knotty a problem for me.”
He laughed and stood up abruptly.
“It’s all right, Baghatch,” he told
me kindly. “It’s perfectly all right. Put your head back in the sand. There’s a
perfectly good chance that all this comes to naught.
“Of course,” he added, as he closed
the door to my office behind him, “there’s also a perfectly good chance that it
won’t.”
[1] The
Talmud, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, chap. 31.
[2]
Schwartz, Howard. Reimagining the Bible:
The Storytelling of the Rabbis. New
York : Oxford
University
[3]
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. A History of Russia Oxford :
Oxford University
[4] Saint Paul of Tarsus , 2nd
Corinthians 12:1-9. The New Geneva
Study Bible. London :
Thomas Nelson. 1982.
[5] Segal,
Allan D. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate
and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. New
Haven : Yale
University
[6] Ezekiel
1:1-28. Tanakh. The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation according to the
Traditional Hebrew texts. Philadelphia-Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication
Society. 1985
