Bill Wagner

Gnosticism is an intellectual leaven in the realm of ideas, much as yeast is in bread dough. Working invisibly, it gradually changes (in one sense) "the same thing" (flour and water) into something new. When this happens at the right time, and in the right way, with the right substance, it is possible to regard the result as nothing short of a transformation. (Lest we over-simplify though, we should note that a similar process turns good cider into vinegar. There is not just one change-agent, or only one possible outcome).

There has been very little of great value written on Gnosticism in the West over the last two thousand or so years, for a simple reason: Gnosticism is not a "thing;" it is a Process. Being a process, it happens gradually, without attracting attention. Often it is only noticed at all when the thinking of one century is compared with that of another. Even then what strikes people is the difference between one "thing" and another "thing" - between (for example) Romanesque Architecture and Gothic Architecture. The "change process" calls no attention to itself. Because it is a sort of Historical Constant (like "the rise of the middle class"), it is only by means of what it produces that anyone would even suspect it had ever "been there" at all. As Christ put it, "Wisdom is justified by her children."

This creates a dualism which baffles people who are unable (or unwilling) to think their ways through it. From a materialist perspective, to know what bread "is," one has merely to read the list of ingredients printed on the wrapper. Yet even the simple (and, as will have been noticed, the so-called "simple" frequently have the advantage over the "educated" in recognizing and getting to the bottom of things) know that simply pouring flour, water, and so on into a bowl will not result in Bread. Here, as in many other places, the axioms proper to mathematics leave us in the lurch when we try to come to grips with life: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (as is a marriage).

From this point, it is usual with people to take the fork in the conceptual road that leads to romantic history - to the Templars, the Druids, the Rosicrucians, and so on. Exposure to, and even immersion in, this sort of thing is well and good up to a point. Only by kindling ideas - making them seem real and possible - can people come alive to them as possibilities in their present lives. They are a kind of dream-bridge between the possible and the actual. We shall not do so here though because, in the end, they are daydreams. Useful and valuable daydreams, but dreams nonetheless. We are daydreaming our way through what could be a real life, and our task is to awaken from our sleep into the light of consciousness. A different goal requires a different procedure.

I suspect that all of us have had the experience of handing a friend or acquaintance a book which we ourselves recognize as being of immense value - only to have it returned a day or so later with the retort (in a tone of perceptible irritation) "I KNOW all this stuff."

This is particularly the case when the book in question deals with comprehending life. People invent dream "answers" to real questions - questions which could provoke them into awakening to some degree. Sleep tends to perpetuate itself. This is why we are taking the other road - the road of Gnosticism.

The answer - for all practical purposes - comes with a shock. And accompanying this shock, a glimmering of insight into it as a process in western history.

Where "the rubber meets the road," Gnosticism in the west has been a simple affair - inquiry into data in an atmosphere in which "belief" is suspended - even rejected. In other words, (if you will), what we have come to call "science." (Science as it claims to be - not what it generally is). Objective evaluation of data - empirical, mathematical, historical, religious, or what have you. Letting the data (facts) "speak for themselves." Above all, recognizing patterns they form spontaneously.

Bear in mind that this is not the summation of everything into one neat package suitable for belief. As we observed, this is a process. The identity of bread is not "flour, water and salt." Rather, identifying the ingredients proper to "bread" and their proper proportions is the first step in a Process. The connection between the ingredients and the end result - the staff of life - may not be apparent (to say nothing of ploughing, sowing, harvesting, threshing, baking, oven design, temperature measurement/regulation and so on). Impatience is not a quality which conduces to success in anything. Here it is no different. Jumping to conclusions is a practice with a very poor track record of success.

The Gnostic attitude (and it is perhaps more an attitude than any other single word can cover) operates in all dimensions simultaneously - just as a light-bulb or a bass drum produce 360-degree effects. As the empirical work is done, the conceptual acuity of the worker is repaired. This is "why," if you will, (as Idries Shah pointed out) some schools have set impossible - even ridiculous - goals for their classes like the transmutation of lead into gold. It is the effect of working in the process - not the purported "goal" - that is of transformative value. And from this perspective, the disastrous effects of greed, impatience, impulsivity, laziness and the rest of it are discernible for what they are - and for the first time. They have little enough to do with "morality," but everything to do with being able to function adequately as a human being who is trying to accomplish something and cannot afford to be hindered in the attempt for no good reason.

Here we have another problem, due to our primitive mentality. Suspending belief (which would otherwise all but compel us to jump to pre-packaged conclusions) is necessary when working. Yet fundamental beliefs (in the unity of God, for an example) are indispensable. It is not humanly possible to believe nothing - if for no other reason that belief in nothing is in itself a belief. What else but a belief system, for example, is "logical positivism" (the intellectual credo of the later twentieth century) ? Reduced to its essence, it is expressed in two sentences:

This is "why" the chessboard design was so prominent in centuries past in centers of real (and attempted) Gnosticism. To the knight, light squares and dark squares alternate - just as day and night. Christ taught that one should not allow the right hand to know what the left did. Lao Tse wrote that Therefore one sometimes regards life with passion and sometimes without, and so on.

In one important respect, Gnosticism alone - the Process (not the belief system) - makes it possible for us to reclaim the data in the scriptures for the first time as individuals outside of a school setting. This is what we shall be concerning ourselves with in the articles which (Deo volente) follow. Not out of any desire to rock the boat, but as illustrative examples of what can be seen when one pays attention rather than dealing in daydreams, using a "textbook" that everyone already has. For better or worse (perhaps, both) the Protestant Reformation erected a "Wall of Separation" - not between church and state, but between Religion and Science.

"Truth" became Augustinian belief in the irrational, by definition; Empiricism (exiled) was left without a conscience. If one result of our endeavors should be to help reasonable people to identify their original common denominator, this in itself will not be a bad thing. After all, it was Micah (as I recall) who pointed out that we were destroyed from lack of knowledge. I.e., not from lack of piety, charity, altruism, generosity or any other virtue. Vitamin C deficiency - scurvy - is not "cured" by an excess of Vitamin A (itself a fatal condition). Perhaps he knew what he was talking about after all ?

If you have come to this page by way of the preceding one, you will have pondered the question of what "the important part" of an automobile is. I asked this, because it illustrates the way we "think." We know, from experience, that the failure of any one of a great many parts of an automobile results in our quickly going nowhere. Nearly every part of an automobile is "the important part" of it when it malfunctions ! Yet we continue to "think" that we can reduce things which really are quite complex to some sort of simplistic "important part," and let them go at that. And when this approach (predictably) fails, we do not blame ourselves - we blame life for being "difficult."

A proverb here may be of value: "Life isn't really all that complicated. It just only works the way it works." How many digits in a telephone number can we get wrong and still reach the person we're calling ? How many letters or symbols can we get wrong when typing a URL and still reach the website we want ? It sounds almost silly to point this out. And it would be, if we didn't turn right around and reduce something as full of critically important, interrelated details as the Bible (or any work of importance) to some imaginary (delusional) "important part."

One can go only so far by means of intuition. After that, it is necessary to get down to work. Which means, in part, adjusting one's mentation to the nature of the material being addressed. Love of music may have attracted you to a conservatory. However, without adapting to the requirements of learning music, this alone will avail you little. As another proverb puts the matter, "Your donkey may have brought you to the door. But he will not be allowed to come in with you."

We can show both of these problems - failure to pay even simple, ordinary attention, and "important part" thinking by way of an exercise which anyone at all familiar with detective stories and the Bible should be able to do fairly readily - and perhaps, even enjoyably. We went over the idea, in the previous installment that Gnosticism in actual practice was as much "the scientific method" in action as anything else. A matter of identifying the actual evidence, assembling it, and letting it lead to the conclusion which naturally follows from it. Let us put all this into practice in determining the identity of Christ - in a context from which previous beliefs, suggestion, "important part" assumptions and the rest of it have been excluded. "Just the facts, ma'am," as Sgt. Friday used to say.

This in itself is just odd enough to attract the notice of someone who has been paying attention. If he had been, as everywhere alleged, a "Jew," would he not have said "It is written in THE law" - or even better yet, "It is written in OUR (mutual, common) law" ?

A little investigative homework here establishes that this is neither a "misprint" nor a case of garbling by translators, for he is quoted identically in both the Gospels and the Talmud. We have in this, then, an authentic clue of potential importance as to who he was.

After we work through the matter of what "Torah" covered in various uses by various contemporary parties, we end up with, in context, "the Books of Moses" - the Pentateuch. (I.e., the first five books of the Bible). Our question then becomes, "How many Pentateuchs were there, then. ?"

2) In the accounts we have of him, Christ is frequently embroiled in disputes with the Pharisees, who accuse him of all sorts of things. Every time he is attacked by them on some charge or other, he immediately and vigorously refutes their allegation. Every time, that is, except one.

This exception is found in John 8:48. Here he is "accused" of being a Samarian and having a devil (familiar spirit). The charge of having a devil he denies. On the "charge" of being a Samarian, he is just strangely enough silent to attract the notice of the attentive.

4) The Story of The Woman Taken in Adultery is a small can of worms in itself. It was not recorded in the older Greek traditions, and was, in fact, adopted from a Syrian tradition - and rather late in time. Thus various Bible translations put it in different places.

Do a little more homework, and an interesting fact emerges. The Samarians, around 30 AD, were as ferocious in "law-enforcement" as are today's Taliban. A woman taken in adultery there was in genuine danger of being stoned to death. According to the consensus of numerous notices in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmudim, however, the same charge at the Temple at Jerusalem would have provoked only ribald humor (if even that).

5) Although the Gospels were purportedly translated from Hebrew into Greek (and for that matter, may have been), they contain a surprising number of direct quotations which turn out to be in Aramaic - not Hebrew.

6) A truly disproportionate number of important figures in the early history of "Christianity" (both pro and con) turn out to have been either Samarians or from Samaria. These include Simon Magus, Justin Martyr, the followers of John the Baptist and any number of others. Additionally, the Nag Hammadi corpus of Christian Gnostic writings are translations, via Greek, from Aramaic originals.

7) If Christ had been, as alleged, a "Jew" (i.e., his own worst enemy), by no stretch of the imagination would he have spent three days "fellowshipping" with the Woman at the Well and her relatives at Sychar (very near what had been the capital of Israel when it was an independent kingdom at odds with Judaea). And this despite the transparently interpolated "Salvation is of the Jews" in the same account. The Judaeans themselves at this point in time not only had no "salvation" to offer anyone, but were in dire need of it themselves (as their various attempts at revolt from the rule of the Herodian gangsters demonstrates. In Biblical usage - if not in revisionist "theological" usage, Salvation equates with national political and religious independence).

Be your verdict what it may, this has been an exercise in the sort of Practical Gnosticism we have been talking about. In which, as a result of weighing evidence in a climate of suspended "belief," one arrives at insights into the nature of things. Which are, as matters turn out, of further (and greater) utility themselves . . .

We might note, in closing for now, that the "Samaritans" referred to themselves by an Aramaic term meaning "Keepers" - as of authentic traditions (and, for that matter, secrets).

The religionist seeks certainty. Conditioned in both church and school to memorize simple statements and parrot them back at test time as "the right answers," he carries this approach over into Bible study. As a result, he essentially programs himself with a belief-system comprised of any number of out-of-context ideas. This comes to be not unlike a plastic model airplane kit in a "religion" box with a tube of glue and hundreds of parts but no instruction sheet detailing how they are to be properly assembled. Not surprisingly, the designs these come to be glued-together into are nothing if not bizarre. Not surprisingly either, each new belief system that comes down the road is comprised of fewer and fewer parts - the rest having been arbitrarily discarded ("the important part" again). As an Orthodox friend wryly observes from his own perspective: "A Romanist is a Christian who failed Patristics. An Anglican is a Romanist who failed Latin. A Methodist is an Anglican who failed Theology . . ." And so goes the parade of what should (and could) be "progress" - downward into entropy.

The Gnostic often loves and values the scriptures no less than does the religionist. But because he approaches them differently, more like the recipe for bread, he kneads as he goes. If he does not know going in, he comes to comprehend from experience that whenever it looks like he's done, he isn't yet. Every new discovery opens another door. But from each new perspective, the previous materials have to be re-worked accordingly, in the new light in which they are seen. In short, he is kneading, whereas the religionist is collecting lumps of this ingredient and that one, keeping them carefully separate from each other, in different conceptual boxes. (The metaphor is hopelessly mixed by now, admittedly. But are we not about the business of kneading - selected ingredients under controlled conditions - in the first place ?)

We can go back and knead the foregoing in the example of a conversation I once had with a Jehovah's Witless about the afterlife state. Predictably, he had ten or so quotations, all "proving" that the dead remain in some equivalent of Bardo. When I queried him about the Vision on the Mount (the encounter of Christ, James, John and Peter with Moses and Elijah in present time), he dismissed this as having been merely a vision - an unreality. Not content to allow futility to pass in futility, I asked him if he ate pork. Of course he did, was the reply. On what basis ? Peter's "vision." (Visions appear to be nothing if not flexible in their bearing on "faith and practice"). Perhaps it was boredom, but I then asked him about "Verily I say unto you: This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." His reply was that the quotation was incorrectly punctuated. It should be "Verily I say unto you this day (i.e., not some other day). Thou shalt be with me (eventually) in Paradise." To the religionist, two pints, one quart and half a gallon are three separate things, and failure (or refusal) to acknowledge this can only be proof of idiocy.

(From here, we might stop to note - since we have stumbled into it - that the Thief on the Cross is a clear-enough illustration of a more general principle, previously seen in the case of Samson: that in the very moment of supreme, climactic agony, an act of focused will - even a verbal one - can have a propulsive effect on not only the individual in extremis, but upon the outworking of subsequent history as well. An entire life may have gone, to all appearances, "the wrong way." But it is the final play that decides the outcome. This is, incidentally, the basic idea underlying human sacrifices . . . and Hebrews 11:35).

Gnosticism thus diverges - hopelessly - from Religionism, even though both deal with the same material. We are not out to make fun of the failings of religionism - only to point out that the accommodation of the Bible to "the human mentality" (rather than the other way around) can only result in a display of "the human condition" writ large. (This is especially the case when people are compelled to believe, and to maintain, that they are "new creations" when it is only too painfully evident that they are anything but - and overbearingly so). Arranging the pieces to suit some pre-conceived view to which allegiance is pledged (the German would say, weltanschauung) is probably at least as amusing as playing solitaire - Lord knows, the professors of this-and-that seem contentedly enough absorbed in their pursuits - some of which are actually of potential value. In the main, however, the more churches we build, the more we as a people inoculate ourselves with their teachings, the worse shape we seem to be in, politically, economically and intellectually. Religious emotionalism remains emotionalism - not religion.

As an antidote (or at least an accessible alternative point of departure) we could do worse than to recall history's first-ever definition of who or what a "christian" is, by Justin Martyr - someone who endeavors to follow Christ, whether he has ever heard of him or not.

"Change" means different things to different people. Similarly, "transformation." To some, re-arranging the furniture. To others, something "other." As Nasrudin observed about growing carrots: "The valuable part is hidden away out of sight; to someone unfamiliar with it, appearances on the surface are deceptive; it requires a particular skill, favorable conditions and a certain amount of time, and a great many donkeys seem to be associated with it."

By this point, enough rabbits should have been pulled out of enough hats to indicate that there may well be "something to this," despite the inevitable reactions (mostly, at root, fear in various disguises) that anything new produces. Cherished opinions and worldviews do serve a useful purpose, and our progress so far has been marked as much by confusion and doubt as by previously unsuspected insights. Why stir everything up ? Why not just give "the answers" ?

In the first place, there is only so much room in any jar. How on earth is a receptacle to be filled with the new and fresh, if it is already filled to the brim with the old and stale ? Remember the matter of Process as opposed to "thing." It was not through coincidence that the same teaching generally rendered "clean the inside" can also be rendered "give alms." Flow presupposes movement - out as well as in. One can see this principle in both constipation and asthma easily enough.

Give someone a fish, and he has one meal. Teach him to fish, and he can feed himself. The contrast between "thing" and "process" could hardly be better illustrated. We have the Bible (thing). And the Koran and the Tao Te Ching, and so on. But of what use are they to people with eyes that see not ? The real (if not the apparent) issue is learning to see.

In the second place, because the "cutting edge" of progress is the razor's edge where faith and doubt meet. Faith, in itself, is essential. But it is also one of the mechanisms the adversary has used to retard human progress by, cumulatively, millions of years. (If a teacher with a class of thirty students wastes one minute, thirty student minutes have been wasted). Progress toward Truth has been made in spite of - not because of - the State Religion. Witness its treatment of Christ, Mansour, Bruno, Paracelsus, Reich, and innumerable others. It is the business of the State Religion to enforce the (concocted) belief system upon which business as usual "makes sense" (kind of). Otherwise, its own usurpations would be seen for what they are. Thus job one for the Romanists was the massacre of the Druids. They could only have disturbed people's "faith" in the new vicarious salvation, and thus their willingness to be ruled, taxed and exploited "in accordance with the will of God." (We might note here that the Druidic philosophy was made a crime against the state by Rome in 37 AD - long before Roman Catholicism appeared. Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we Can imagine).

A third reason why we do not just give "the answers" is expressed in the proverb, "A thousand monks; a thousand religions." A thousand maladies, a thousand cures; a thousand equations, a thousand "answers." Answers do not exist independently of questions, any more so than solutions do independently of problems.

Every abstraction is an inversion of the reality it purports to represent. Every one, every time. This is how, for example, when imposed from the level of abstractions, the quest for Justice becomes "affirmative action." Realities are, if you will, corporeal. Abstractions are incorporeal - images in reverse (just as reflections in a mirror are). And one of the steps we could take to render ourselves less easily manipulable is to recognize this. In practice as well as theory -

This is not to say that abstractions cannot be useful. Western physics and mathematics are predicated, not only upon abstractions, but upon abstractions (like the square root of negative one) which have no possible conceptual or material analogues.

But we run away with things. We make a promising beginning by noticing something. We follow it up, and discover something congruent with it. Once we intuit where the line of discovery seems to be heading, we quit working, posit some abstraction as its (supposed) terminus, announce it to the world with an air of triumph, and retire, satisfied with ourselves. It is thus that well-meaning people come (i.e., jump) to conclusions about one and the same matter which are diametrically opposed to each other. And the more sweeping the generalization, the more grotesque the dichotomy. The Jesuits are the Good Guys ! No! The Jesuits are the Bad Guys ! No ! The Jesuits are just pawns . . . It is not that we cannot learn from this - but that we don't. We want "the answers," and "the answers" we shall have - and reality be damned in the process, if need be. A regular industry, supplying people with "the answers," has existed - as a monopoly - for 1500 years. Now, competition is beginning to appear openly. But it will not be until we "know ourselves" a little better that the con men in the business will start to be recognized for what they are.

How do those of us who read the Bible do so ? The Protestant Christian (of whatever stripe), at least, regards it as a child regards the teacher's edition of an algebra book - the main body of it as just one problem after another, but with "the answers" in the back (Rabbi Paul's Epistles). So what does he do ? Indoctrinates himself with "answers" that contradict everything in the entire rest of the book. The easy way out - via abstraction. And because he approaches it with this preconception, precious little of it makes any real sense to him at all. It is all rather too much.

face !" People love hidden mysteries. But everything really important is obvious. The king has no advantage over the beggar in the matter of understanding - just a different set of problems. This - if you need one - is a point of departure which can be productive of results which will be as real as you are, if followed with any consistency. It worked well enough in the example of the Identity of Christ. It pretty much works everywhere - it just requires a "knack" to put it into practice - a "knack" which develops through using it, through association with others that have it (even in embryo), through exposure to various ideas (especially to the Sufi corpus of Idries Shah, which is designed for this very purpose), and above all through endeavoring to "know ourselves" in every way possible. If only because people who are dreaming are easily manipulable by anyone able to employ dreams in service of his own ends. As witness television and cinema (and - dare we say - the 501.c.3.(a) pulpit ?).

If you are being lied-to, manipulated , coerced into doing things economically that violate your own conscience, and deceived at every turn by forces which are employing tested techniques to accomplish this with cold-blooded determination, what you can actually use may be an inkling of how the whole thing works - and doesn't. "The question about the sky - the answer about a rope." Gnosticism is not (despite some bad press) airy speculation. It is about actually learning things of practical value, like recognizing and escaping from slavery. However disappointing or uncongenial the foregoing has been, it has at least been an attempt at (if you will) metaphysical homeopathy - using a recognized poison as its own antidote.

It is of little real utility, in the end, to present Bible exegesis (or anything else of interest) if all people are going to do is program themselves with it. Going from one belief to the next belief is not necessarily progress. The transition from believing to knowing is - or at least can be. Much will depend on recognizing and overcoming the kind of idiocy ("hithertofore, "normalcy") we have been detailing, like "important part" thinking, the fraudulent substitution of abstractions for realities, failing to pay simple attention, not allowing the data to assemble spontaneously into the patterns intrinsic to them, being deceived by labels (two pints/one quart/half a gallon), etc.

Gnostics are born - not made. True enough. But as the German proverb has it, "Nothing falls from heaven." Praised by an admirer for his mastery of the art of music, J. S. Bach is said to have replied, "Work equally hard at it for an equally long time and you will be equally accomplished."

What we today call "Propaganda" and "Public Relations" were no less important in the ancient world than in the modern one. Then, as now, there were Interest Groups, at odds with each other behind the scenes and operating through "fronts," seeking to establish their own "spins" on the "news" (and to create or suppress it to advance their own agendas) as "the Truth."

One can grasp this easily, having considered that in the accounts originating in Palestine (which would include the Evan Bohan Hebrew Matthew, the Gospel of Peter and the originals of the four canonical Gospels), responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ is laid squarely at the feet of the Temple Establishment/Cabal (a textbook example of a coalition government, in which each party sought to undermine its rivals even as it co-operated with them in furthering measures favorable to their collective interest). In the accounts of it emanating from Rome, however, Christ was executed by the Roman Government as an Enemy of the State ( therefore of Civilization and Decency itself). Once the basic working model is grasped, it comes as less of a shock as it otherwise might to realize that many of the "partisan" "smears" of Christ and of Christianity found in the writings of the "objective and disinterested" Roman, Celsus, are found - verbatim - in the Talmud. This is simply Public Relations - the creation of mental images conducive to someone's agenda - via suggestion from a trusted source: Propaganda. There is no new thing under the sun.

Whether attributable to Judahist persecution alone or not (and much more than likely not, in light of the wholesale proscriptions and book burnings of the State Religion in the centuries which followed), the hundred years from around 65 to 165 AD are "the Age of Shadows." We have accounts (much worked-over, and frequently at odds with each other, but still accounts) which originated (at least) before it. But for all practical (and especially, historical) purposes, it is as if we have a train pulling out of a station into a long tunnel. And at the other end of it, something emerging again which bears no resemblance to what went in. What went in was, however subsequently distorted and imaginatively re-worked, tangible history. What came out was theology - abstractions linked together in imagination into pictures. In the place of astronomy, constellations.

Recognizing this as the context in which we find ourselves, we are in a favorable position. Serious and interested people - from at least the time of Jerome onward - have recognized that rather a lot of the individual data they are striving to get to the bottom of simply don't add up. In John's Gospel, for an example, Christ bestows the Holy Spirit upon his Disciples before he leaves for parts unknown. According to Acts, which follows on its heels, this is not until Pentecost has come - and then upon seventy people, simultaneously.

The redactors - fortunately for us - were in a hurry, and overlooked a great deal of primary significance. Either that, or they were working independently of each other. Either way, we are their unintended beneficiaries by virtue of the Gnostic approach, which eschews "important part" assumptions. When the fan belt breaks, the "important part" is the fan belt.

"Little details" tend to be overlooked by editors who are in a hurry, are inadequately familiar with the material they are "massaging" into conformity with company policy, are out of communication with their colleagues, or are simply not bright enough to grasp implicit connections and implications. (Such concocted accounts are unraveled every day in courtrooms, as opposing lawyers dissect the testimonies of witnesses. We are doing nothing unusual here, unless it is thinking).

Once freed from the organizational framework imposed by traditional belief systems, such "little details" spontaneously suggested (in part two of this account) that the Christ of the Gospels had originally been a Samarian - or (since if the wind always blows from the same direction, the trees grow crooked), perhaps, that one of the individuals conflated into a composite "Christ" had been a Samarian.

Evidence indicative that this was, in fact, the case is much more pervasive, and runs a good bit deeper in the accounts, than the data (very cursorily) presented so far would suggest. Perhaps the best-known (and least understood) of such is the Parable of the Good Samarian.

To begin with, we find the validity of the term itself ruled out in advance by the (would-be) brain police. Remembering (for once) to run the "spell check" program a moment ago, I found that "Samarian" had elicited: "This term does not exist in the dictionary," with "Samaritan" proposed as the (official) "right" word. Thereon hangs a tale in and of itself - like Macbeth's, one "told by an idiot; full of sound and fury." To which we shall come in turn, as comprehending what it involves requires familiarity with data we shall be coming to directly. (Note here, for the moment, that the ability to control language is the ability to control thought itself, through control over what words even exist, and what those suffered to remain "mean." This is, if you will, an example of what Orwell called "Newspeak" - of language laundered of potentially dangerous conceptual possibilities. One result of it is people bearing in mind that they must beware of serpents - while operating under the assumption that a serpent must be some sort of vegetable. Cui bono ?)

To anyone familiar at all with the conventions of the genre, this is a "tip off" that what we are dealing with in this is most certainly not a kind of first-century sunday school lesson, but a matter at Law - Scriptural Law (Torah) - "Pilpul" (exegetical debate).

It suits all parties with an interest in the matter to portray the "common people" of the first century AD as illiterate buffoons - western "christianity" because it conduces to its pretence (which flies in the face of all evidence) that Christ's Parables were the reductions of abstruse complexities down to the level of comprehension of Joe Sixpack; Pharisaism (i.e., Judaism), perhaps, because this is congruent with the Rabbinic relegation of the man in the street to somewhat less-than-human status by its first-century luminaries. (Politics make for even stranger bedfellows than this - witness the current pornography statutes in the US, which are the result of a coalition of "fundamentalists" and feminoids). Appearances are deceiving - great care is taken that they should be so.

Judaea had enjoyed a system of universal, free education for well over a hundred years when the above question was raised. The corresponding situation in Samaria is imponderable; the victors write the "history." But they overlook little details . . . such as that someone who (as was well known) had never seen the inside of a Pharisaic school (let alone, an academy) could hoist those whose defining specialty was scriptural exegesis on their own collective petard. And this not because the Gospel redactors claim that he did, but because what he said establishes that he did.

Pilpul - exegetical debate - could break out as easily as a fight at a hockey game, and did. Any chance remark could touch it off. It might be conducted in almost any imaginable spirit - from friendly bantering to fiercely partisan "political debate." But it was still Pilpul - debate over the meaning of a passage in scripture. We have no real analogue of it today - probably, by design - because there are no agreed-upon hermeneutic axioms, even among "christian denominations" (to say nothing of "cross-cultural" exchanges). Because there were "rules" of interpretation then, there could be intelligent (and potentially productive) discussion -even between people who held to widely differing opinions, that had real "bottom lines." Today, in contrast, there are no acknowledged rules: the result, by default, is that "anything goes." No one need even acknowledge anything, let alone be bound by it ("A Methodist is an Anglican who failed theology . . ."). In place of solid learning, and a solid Culture, we have (at best) amateur philosophy, after the manner of the Hellenized western empire. Imagination run riot.

In Palestine, scripture spoke for itself. And what resulted was, if not learning, at least the possibility of it (which is, really, about all anyone can ask. Nobody can push a rope). The alternative is, essentially, emotionalism - belief which, by nature, is impervious to both fact and reason; communicated and maintained via emotional manipulation (did someone unkindly say "brainwashing" ?) Everyone is his own supreme court, from which no appeal is possible, because there is no basis upon which an appeal can be made. There are no acknowledged facts. There are only opinions. A better recipe for creating entropy could hardly be imagined.

Life is nothing if not ironic: the very people making the biggest possible deal of going "Back to the Bible" are among the very people least prepared to surrender even one whit of what they imagine to be their "individual sovereignty" where the Bible they (in imagination) want to go back to is concerned. As usual, "We has met the enemy, and he is us."

As we noted, Palestinians (of all stripes) were not amateur philosophers by disposition - they were empiricists. The Palestinian mentality dealt in concrete particulars, by means of reason. Viewed as abstractions (i.e., in the way we are used to approaching everything), the religious ideas of both were, at root, "mythological" (and not at all incompatible). But where the Hellenist took this as a springboard into flights of imaginative fancy, the Palestinian approached it as he would geometry, confident in its susceptibility to definition and solution by means of fixed hermeneutic laws (axioms). An oversimplification of it would be that the Palestinian attempted to institute the rule of heaven here on earth, in present time; while the Hellenist aspired to reach from present circumstances and limitations up into heaven but, lacking any idea of how to go about it, could only moon about "pie in the sky in the sweet bye-and-bye." Having taken the Hellenist fork in the road, much else has followed for us in consequence.

An attorney (who knew what he was about) addressing a jury of Hellenists, would paint them a simplified, powerfully suggestive picture in imagination - full of colorful imagery executed in deft rhetorical brushstrokes, on the order of a campaign speech. His goal would be persuasion, through setting their imaginations into sympathetic resonation with his; to win their belief. Their trust. A lawyer similarly addressing a jury of Palestinians would be addressing a jury of fellow jurists, and proceed accordingly.

"And who is my NEIGHBOR" ? alerted them (if not us) that a point at Law (Torah) was in dispute. And not some abstraction, generalized beyond any correspondence with reality either, but a specific law, and its proper interpretation (exegesis).

Amateur philosophers, obliged to turn "neighbor" into a free floating abstraction (otherwise it would be incongruent with their definition of it by fiat: "absolutely everybody, absolutely everywhere"), resort here to eisogesis (reading something into the text that simply isn't there - arbitrarily introducing a sort of conversion factor into the equation in order to make it yield the answer which accords with their preconceptions, without acknowledging that they are doing this). Thus we have "your neighbor OR your brother" - as if these were two different categories, independent of one another.

The force of the vav-connective in verse 2 however is self-evidently not partative, but epigetic. If it is to be translated at all (and the Amplified Bible, chosen for this reason, disregards it, as it often is in translation), its force in the sentence equates to "your neighbor - YEA, your brother" (specific). Or, as in other places, "EVEN your brother" (emphatic). In scriptural law (and scripture is, preeminently, a legal document), "neighbor" and "brother" are synonyms.

Go back and read. The Law of Release applies to "neighbor" and "brother" because both are in covenant relation with YHVH - by virtue of which they are obliged to observe his laws regulating their dealings with each other. They must (as part and parcel of their covenant with the Source of their Laws) love each other as themselves - extending (as in this case) into the specifics of debt-forgiveness. "Love" in scripture is not a term of sentiment, but a transitive verb, quantifiable by its results (as here). One judges the tree by its fruits.

The Law of Release does not, however, apply in the case of the alien - he is in a separate category, being neither "neighbor" nor "brother." Being an alien to the covenant, its provisions do not extend to him - any more than does an inheritance left by a stranger, or the by-laws of an organization to which he does not belong. Expressed algebraically, A = X, B = X; therefore, A = B. Neighbor = Brother. And by the same equation, since C does not equal X, it does not (and cannot) equal either A or B.

In its plain sense (if not in the imagination of commentators), the question asked by the lawyer, and the living quick of the Parable of the Good Samarian, is: "Who is an Israelite" ? And his answer (then, as now) touches off an explosion.

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