Skip to main content

Eden to Patmos - Week 1.

The road above En Hakkore in the Maniototo
I'm reading the Bible right through, using the Nonesuch edition of the KJV. There are no chapter or verse numbers and while this is quite an old book, the paper is still crisp and white. It's a surprisingly easy read.  It's a long time since I've read the Authorised Version, and the language takes a bit of adjusting to, but the old words have an entertaining sort of quaintness about them - Begat, wherefor, bakemeats, Earing (ploughing); ouches (sockets for jewels); pilled (stripped off).

I have a bit of trouble turning off the inner Biblical critic. Reading Genesis and half of Exodus in a week means the overall pattern and structure of the text is very plain to see: the seams in the joining of the sources in the story of Joseph are pretty obvious, as are the puzzles of timing - Isaac is more than 21 years on his deathbed, for example, and Ishmael is about 14 years old when his mother abandons him under a bush to die. Abraham tries to pass his wife off as his sister twice and Isaac tries the same trick once, with a king named Abimilech featuring in 2 of the stories. The synchretic nature of the narrative is very obvious with this kind of reading, but that's not what I'm here for. Neither is the fairly obvious agenda of the compilers. The Lord of the Creation appears, for example on Mt. Sinai, but instead of letting us all in on the meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything, or giving us a few hints about quantum theory or relativity, gives instead, painstaking detail for the construction of the box in which his souvenirs are to be carried about. He seems to fill an agenda, in other words, laid out by a bunch of priests in post-exilic Babylon; but that is oddly reassuring for its humanity and accessibility. God is present in these human stories and in their human compilers. Rollicking through, I hear the stories as they would once have been told; as folk stories full of repetitions, the rhythm of whose language shines through even in translation. I find myself caught up afresh in the lives of the ancient ones.

There are the two stories of creation and all the ancient oddities which have somehow stumbled into the text and got stuck there before a decent editor happened along - the Nephilim and the Tower of Babel and God trying to kill Moses only a few days after sending him on a journey. There is the flood with all  its variously counted cargo. There is Jacob struggling with his dreams and with God and with himself. Joseph runs naked from his lascivious owner and then, later, weeps to be united with his little brother. Names are filled with meaning, and none more so than the Ground of All Being who is revealed to Moses in an only apparently burning bush and whose name is not a proper noun so much as a state of being and a verb. And then there is the long story of the boy who was raised between two cultures in a time of genocide, and who became a shepherd and then a seer and then a political activist and then a baffled and exhausted leader of his rebellious people. I try to forget the 20th Century question how did these stories arise? and try instead to let them entertain me and inform me. Letting go of all my educated preconceptions of these stories is like any other form of self surrender: a door through which the never absent divine can speak.
Labels:

Comments

Merv said…
Before I noticed that you had labeled this post with 'pilgrimage', I was reminded of the Hikoi you undertook almost 3 years ago.
This time also I see you have a companion on your journey & you have your 'rod & staff', which are your intellect & imagination.
All the best.
7 December 2016 at 12:32
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living the lies

In 1969, when I was 16 I left school and got a job as a labourer. My wages weren't high but to me they were a fortune and within a few months  I bought my first car, a 1938 Morris 8 sports, this one here. It had a minuscule 4 cylinder engine and a wood framed body which meant it was slow and it flexed so much when going around corners that the doors would sometimes fly open. Nevertheless I thought it was pretty damned cool, especially with the modifications I made to the muffler for performance and advertising purposes, ie, removing it.  Back then, the most popular TV program was The Avengers, in which the suave and resourceful hero, John Steed drove a 1928 3 Litre Bentley. Which looked kinda like my car, right? Yeah, right. Anyway, John Steed usually entered his car by leaping nimbly over the door, so I emulated him whenever possible. Now all this is preamble. I want to tell you about something that happened to me one day in Papanui Road, Christchurch. My car ...
1 comment
Read more

How To Walk 800 km

John is just walking the 80 metres back to his bike here, but you get the general drift.  The question I get asked more than any other at the end of the Hikoi is "how are your feet?" It's nice that people care, but my feet have never been an issue on long walks. Good shoes and socks prevent blisters and cushion the effects of long distances on hard surfaces, but I have had other issues. When walking the Camino Santiago knees, Achilles tendons and shin splints have all at one time or another given me trouble. This time round, these have all been fine and I finished feeling as though I could just keep on going indefinitely; to Cape Reinga if needs be. Over the last couple of years I have learned 6 things that have made all the difference. Namely: 1. Footwear. On the Camino I wore walking shoes - Salomon in 2009 and Asics in 2012. A year ago I changed to full walking boots - Salomon Cosmic 2 - and the difference was instant and major. When walking more than 15 minutes...
1 comment
Read more

Why I Hold the Views I Do

St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder.  One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...
47 comments
Read more

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

It happens sometimes. I have a question or am pondering some conundrum or other and the right book arrives at pretty much the right time. In a session with my supervisor a few months back Paul mentioned an article by Rene Girard, whom I had never heard of. I read the article and over the past month have read two of his books, The Scapegoat and this one. I have another couple sitting on my shelf and they have elbowed all others in my to be read pile out of the way and sit firmly on the top. Girard has pulled a number of threads together for me: he has enabled me to rethink the atonement in a way which is consistent with an evolving Universe: he presents a view of scripture which is again consistent with what I know of science but is also faithful to the Bible as the Word of God; he has given me, for the first time in my life a theology (if that is the right word) of Satan which makes sense to me. Most importantly for me, he is consistent with my own lived experience of God's s...
2 comments
Read more

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and...
3 comments
Read more