Jingle bells! Ornaments! Rock and Roll Christmas blaring from the speaker sets! Popcorn strings! Wrapping paper torn to shreds! Balies downed and eggnog owned, double-fisting alcoholoic beverages! Santa! Santa! Stop your sleigh! Drop a bag of boxes in our living space! Here! Here! I've been good! Pull your sleigh in my little neighborhood!
And we didn't do any of it this year. Instead, a quiet family candellight. Joyful presents without wrapping sheets. A plane at 6:00 am for the female Bowmans off to Spain.
And now, it's just my dad and I. The next three weeks of work, films, video games, and deep conversations. I'm so, so glad I'm her with him. He doesn't have many years to go. But I'm also so, so glad I slept eight hours last night. I'm gonna need it.
Anyways, probably one last day on The Last Temptation of Christ.
I want to begin on the cliffhanger I left on yesterday, because I think there's something there. It seems that every time a faith codifies and solidifies into a Law, a Code, or an oppressive Church (essentially, as soon as a faith begins to use the words/teachings of the previous Prophet/God whatever to control the parishoners) a new, charismatic, gnostic (intuitive, redactionary), spirit-centered leader rises up, rejects the oppression of the eccelesiastical authority, and reestablishes a new religion of the heart, different from the first but also dependent on it. So, in a way, all faiths begin more or less gnostic, based in special-knowledge and intuitive spirituality as opposed to the codified and authority-centered revelation of their mother church. Every time the church begins to become too controlling, God sends a new savior to release the people from the shackles of the first, and that savior always has gnostic tendencies.
Joseph Smith and his new-prophet centered "completed" gospel to the Americans.
(Maybe) Mohammad and his angel-revealed faith destroying the oppression of the Meccan authority before him.
And, as we're looking at, Jesus' spirit-centered gospel to the Jews in opposition to the oppressive Jewish church.
All initial leaders are more gnostic than traditional. They come with 'special knowledge' to a church hardened by years of fear and stagnancy, they spread their intuitive message, they reinterpret the previous scriptures to fit their own theology, and they begin a new church in hopes that no longer will God's law be enforced from without but, rather, each man will rule himself by God internally.
But, as always happens, the new prophet dies and goes away (to heaven, Paradise, or whatever) and his followers are left with nothing but his words, perfect material for a new church, new Law, and new power. Even Kazantazakis hints at this in his book. Before Jesus is even crucified, Jacob (Zebidee's son, power-hungry Jacob) is already frothing at the chops.
And we didn't do any of it this year. Instead, a quiet family candellight. Joyful presents without wrapping sheets. A plane at 6:00 am for the female Bowmans off to Spain.
And now, it's just my dad and I. The next three weeks of work, films, video games, and deep conversations. I'm so, so glad I'm her with him. He doesn't have many years to go. But I'm also so, so glad I slept eight hours last night. I'm gonna need it.
Anyways, probably one last day on The Last Temptation of Christ.
I want to begin on the cliffhanger I left on yesterday, because I think there's something there. It seems that every time a faith codifies and solidifies into a Law, a Code, or an oppressive Church (essentially, as soon as a faith begins to use the words/teachings of the previous Prophet/God whatever to control the parishoners) a new, charismatic, gnostic (intuitive, redactionary), spirit-centered leader rises up, rejects the oppression of the eccelesiastical authority, and reestablishes a new religion of the heart, different from the first but also dependent on it. So, in a way, all faiths begin more or less gnostic, based in special-knowledge and intuitive spirituality as opposed to the codified and authority-centered revelation of their mother church. Every time the church begins to become too controlling, God sends a new savior to release the people from the shackles of the first, and that savior always has gnostic tendencies.
Joseph Smith and his new-prophet centered "completed" gospel to the Americans.
(Maybe) Mohammad and his angel-revealed faith destroying the oppression of the Meccan authority before him.
And, as we're looking at, Jesus' spirit-centered gospel to the Jews in opposition to the oppressive Jewish church.
All initial leaders are more gnostic than traditional. They come with 'special knowledge' to a church hardened by years of fear and stagnancy, they spread their intuitive message, they reinterpret the previous scriptures to fit their own theology, and they begin a new church in hopes that no longer will God's law be enforced from without but, rather, each man will rule himself by God internally.
But, as always happens, the new prophet dies and goes away (to heaven, Paradise, or whatever) and his followers are left with nothing but his words, perfect material for a new church, new Law, and new power. Even Kazantazakis hints at this in his book. Before Jesus is even crucified, Jacob (Zebidee's son, power-hungry Jacob) is already frothing at the chops.
Jacob had alread beome reconsiled to the rabbi's death and was spinning in his mind what they would do when they were left on earth without him.
"We cannot oppose God's will and the will of our master. As the propets tell us, Rabbi, it is your duty to die, ours to live: to live so that eh words you spoke shall not perish. We'll establish them firmly in new Holy Scriptures, we'll make laws, build our own ynagogues and slect our own high priests, Scribes and Pharisees."
Jesus was terrified. "You cricify the spirit, Jacob," he shouted. "No, no, I don't want that!"
"This is the only way we can prevent the spirit from turing into air and escaping," Jacob countered.
"But it won't be free any more,; it won't be spirit!"
"That doesn't matter. It will look like spirit. For our work, Rabbi, that's sufficient."
Already Jacob has begun the process of moving from spirit to Law, from intuitive revelation to authoritative, from freedom to control, in hopes he can preserve some simulacrum of Jesus' spirit after he is crucified. And, as always happens, as soon as this transition has begun, the spirit is (in many instances) inevitably quenched and a new power structure is constructed to replace the old. Gnosis is replaced by church or Law.
I guess I should define gnosis for this paper: World-negating, intuitive, and redactionary spirituality. I think these three attributes can sum up quite well the similarities between most gnostic texts. And the Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ is all three at points.
It's important to note, though, that Jesus in The Last Temptation isn't a gnostic Jesus, though. Rather, he struggles with gnosticism. These gnostic attributes are all points on the spectrum on which Jesus oscillates throughout the book. He's not a traditional Jesus, he's not a Buddhist Jesus, he's not a gnostic Jesus. Rather, he spends mental and physical time and space in all three of these areas, ending as more of a cornucopia of ideologies from many of these theologies rather than holding onto one in particular.
*
Another gnostic struggle in The Last Temptation is that of women. What are women? Are they good, are they evil? Are they temptation, are they grace? Are they a hindrance to God's full will and purpose for men, or are they an access point? The book begins surely in the woman-as-temptation camp, as does Jesus. The God of Israel is described as a god who's "body had never been touched by a woman" (38). As opposed to taking a wife and settling down, Barabbas chose the Kingdom of heaven (41). In the book, woman represents to men a hindrance to achieving the fullness of experience and purpose of God.
Similarly, woman represents (across the book) a temptation away from God's purpose for Jesus. Early in the book, Jesus visits a woman on his road to the monastery who tries to convince him of the futility of monastic life.
I guess I should define gnosis for this paper: World-negating, intuitive, and redactionary spirituality. I think these three attributes can sum up quite well the similarities between most gnostic texts. And the Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ is all three at points.
It's important to note, though, that Jesus in The Last Temptation isn't a gnostic Jesus, though. Rather, he struggles with gnosticism. These gnostic attributes are all points on the spectrum on which Jesus oscillates throughout the book. He's not a traditional Jesus, he's not a Buddhist Jesus, he's not a gnostic Jesus. Rather, he spends mental and physical time and space in all three of these areas, ending as more of a cornucopia of ideologies from many of these theologies rather than holding onto one in particular.
*
Another gnostic struggle in The Last Temptation is that of women. What are women? Are they good, are they evil? Are they temptation, are they grace? Are they a hindrance to God's full will and purpose for men, or are they an access point? The book begins surely in the woman-as-temptation camp, as does Jesus. The God of Israel is described as a god who's "body had never been touched by a woman" (38). As opposed to taking a wife and settling down, Barabbas chose the Kingdom of heaven (41). In the book, woman represents to men a hindrance to achieving the fullness of experience and purpose of God.
Similarly, woman represents (across the book) a temptation away from God's purpose for Jesus. Early in the book, Jesus visits a woman on his road to the monastery who tries to convince him of the futility of monastic life.
"Ooo, unlucky devil," she shouted, "don't you know that God is not found in monasteries but in the homes of men? Wherever you find husband and wife, that's where you find God...the domestic God, not the monastic: that's the true God." (Kazantazakis 72)
Later in the desert, in Scorsese's film, the snake has the voice of Magdalene and tempts him to a similar domestic life. And even later, the final temptation of Jesus is that of domesticity, that of settling into a life of simple spirituality, world-affirmation, and love of women. God's will, says the tempter, is domestic, the continuation of the flesh through children, the furthering of the lineage of Israel, and woman is an access point to that will. And Jesus' final victory is the rejection of this temptation for his true purpose: death on the cross.
Now, this idea of woman as temptation isn't purely gnostic. "Womanness" is equated with error in the gnostic texts; however, Jewish tradition has a long line of stories which situation woman surely as temptress, an appellation women today are still having to break down in our hyper-masculine religious cultures.
However, I'm out of time. I'll continue on this more tomorrow.
Now, this idea of woman as temptation isn't purely gnostic. "Womanness" is equated with error in the gnostic texts; however, Jewish tradition has a long line of stories which situation woman surely as temptress, an appellation women today are still having to break down in our hyper-masculine religious cultures.
However, I'm out of time. I'll continue on this more tomorrow.