MANICHAEAN
11-07-2010, 02:45 PM
She held the child suckled to her breast. His vulnerability matched her protectiveness for all that lay ahead. The instinct inherent in her very soul that poured forth love to that which she cradled in her arms. To nurture and to feel proud of the child which was integral to her in both flesh and spirit. And yet, it was not to be.
For on the face of it, Maryam was an orthodox Jewish daughter. Her parents, Joachim & Anne of the Tribe of Levi loved her dearly & her son Isa even more.
But the crux of the story lay in how this Jew’s daughter, this variant, medieval in origin and Christian in essence was to become a compromise by which Christianity managed to make the New Testament its Scripture without surrendering the Old.
Forget for the moment, the time worn events and dates and the prophecies. Start at the beginning of the tale and the qualities and essence of the all too human mortals involved.
Observe if you will, the patriarch with whom the covenant was originally sealed, and who, for its sake, first circumcised his son, then tied him to the altar as a sacrifice.
"And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son."
It was an image which was to haunt Europe for nearly two millennia: the original Jew, bearded and ancient, raising aloft the threatening blade as Isaac, whom the rabbis taught was thirty years old or more, but whom the imagination of Christianity had made a child watches from the altar in submissive silence.
But in retrospect and almost imperceptibly, like a light mist gently enveloping the lower slopes and stream of a mountain valley, Abraham was to bridge into the New Testament, the new covenant, in which patriarchal rigor was replaced by maternal mercy and the symbol of that mercy, Maryam the Jewish daughter.
She stood that day, proud and pregnant, belly to belly with her long-barren cousin, Elizabeth.
"My soul doth magnify the Lord. . . . For he has regarded the low estate of his hand maiden. . . . He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever."
Thus as a daughter of Abraham, inheritor of the covenant, she circumcises her son Isa on the eighth day, as the first Jewish father did his.
Christians today, and this is the crux of my story, appear but dimly aware of their filial relationship to Judaism. Yet to such minds, the myth of Maryam's virginity seems to mean that though herself in one sense Jewish, she does not belong to her Jewish father, much less to his impotent surrogate, her Jewish husband, but only to her Christian sons. She exists as no one's wife, but as an eternal daughter-mother, a being utterly female with¬out being human:
For on the face of it, Maryam was an orthodox Jewish daughter. Her parents, Joachim & Anne of the Tribe of Levi loved her dearly & her son Isa even more.
But the crux of the story lay in how this Jew’s daughter, this variant, medieval in origin and Christian in essence was to become a compromise by which Christianity managed to make the New Testament its Scripture without surrendering the Old.
Forget for the moment, the time worn events and dates and the prophecies. Start at the beginning of the tale and the qualities and essence of the all too human mortals involved.
Observe if you will, the patriarch with whom the covenant was originally sealed, and who, for its sake, first circumcised his son, then tied him to the altar as a sacrifice.
"And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son."
It was an image which was to haunt Europe for nearly two millennia: the original Jew, bearded and ancient, raising aloft the threatening blade as Isaac, whom the rabbis taught was thirty years old or more, but whom the imagination of Christianity had made a child watches from the altar in submissive silence.
But in retrospect and almost imperceptibly, like a light mist gently enveloping the lower slopes and stream of a mountain valley, Abraham was to bridge into the New Testament, the new covenant, in which patriarchal rigor was replaced by maternal mercy and the symbol of that mercy, Maryam the Jewish daughter.
She stood that day, proud and pregnant, belly to belly with her long-barren cousin, Elizabeth.
"My soul doth magnify the Lord. . . . For he has regarded the low estate of his hand maiden. . . . He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever."
Thus as a daughter of Abraham, inheritor of the covenant, she circumcises her son Isa on the eighth day, as the first Jewish father did his.
Christians today, and this is the crux of my story, appear but dimly aware of their filial relationship to Judaism. Yet to such minds, the myth of Maryam's virginity seems to mean that though herself in one sense Jewish, she does not belong to her Jewish father, much less to his impotent surrogate, her Jewish husband, but only to her Christian sons. She exists as no one's wife, but as an eternal daughter-mother, a being utterly female with¬out being human: