Love, Psyche and the Angels Watchers in the margins and in honor of the new book by Anna Zesi "Stories of Love and Psyche." When the heads are discovered dell'ultrasinistra fans fan of Paul of Tarsus and fanatical supporters of early Christianity, let us make some historical reflection, but not particularly deep, the origin of some specific features This exaltation of Christianity. We know that comes from the Jewish world and by the full elaboration of an idea that was based on the concept of "salvation" and, in the face of 'salvation' of course there was the guilt, sin, the spread of evil that we must look and so on.
But while the Jews were held in bay sin merely to correct the behavior through the painstaking (and quite a bit 'obsessive) compliance with rules and precepts, such as what to eat and what not, here is that Christians (even primitive) found that beyond the behavior There is an evil inborn, innate to humans and closely related to sexuality (even if they deny it, but it's a fake).
Thus some features of Jewish thought are very different from the corresponding Christian: you refuse the thought of 'original sin' (developed by Paul and then just laid down by Augustine, and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent and reaffirmed every five minutes to every Pope) saying that the baby is 'Free from sin' (Kohelet Rabbah), something also highlighted by the fact that a baby is baptized a Christian (that is subjected to purification ritual) as a jew, and also a Muslim, not (as, if a male is circumcised, but this is not the practice of 'cleaning').
Sexual pleasure is not considered sinful, but rather a sign of God's goodness to which it is permitted to enjoy, and the woman has a right to what specific sexuality, and perhaps more human if we interpret correctly the basic precepts of the Talmud of Jewish marriage law, where is the woman who can claim 'rights' marital which man can and must only (it's a mitzvah, a commandment) to respond adequately (or at least try).
So how is the woman who decides whether and when to have children because, in Jewish thought, one can not impose on anyone a practice that can cause pain or death. Which, in other words, it means that a woman sexually is not seen as a receptacle of the demonic, or that the status of women is the preferred size virginal, although maternal (and even this has its good Islam confused: believe in the virginity of Our Lady).
big difference with the Christian world (and also with the greek-roman). Not to mention the medieval Jewish mysticism, where, as in Islam, sexual intercourse between a man and a woman ' close' to the divine, while the mystics and mystical Christian, you know, had to fend for themselves to reach the ecstatic (!) .
Finally, let's also this: Christians banned the interpretation of dreams (I seem to remember that it was Pope Gregory II in 'VIII sec. Dc) and in the Talmud says that " a dream not interpreted is like a letter read "opening the way for the Kabbalah, even in the vernacular, means precisely to give a meaning to dreams, or (again) at least try.
But if Jewish thought and Christian lived together in ancient times and originated from the same ethno-linguistic-monotheistic cradle, where and when they took different paths?
Strange to say we find the answer in the sacred writings of the Coptic Church of Ethiopia where it has become a canonical text, the Book of Enoch is considered apocryphal by Jews (but with some sympathy) by Christians. A book that was the theological and ideological basis of a current Jewish apocalyptic, which developed around the fifth century. BC, " whose thinking was clearly different from the rest of the production of his time Jewish" (1) , in open opposition to Judaism that is 'traditional'.
Here, the first and original array of Christian thought.
Enoch, not Moses, is the patriarch of reference of this text (or rather 'texts' in the plural because it actually consists of five 'books' in stark contrast to the Biblical Pentateuch) and the current was known as "'enoch'. As one of the greatest Jewish scholars of the apocalyptic "The Enochian founded the modern religion, especially visible in the derivation Christian " (2) . At that which binds, through five centuries, the ideology enoch to Christianity, you can actually and legitimately give the name of culture Judeo-Christian.
Well, while in the sixth century BC, or thereabouts, the priests of the Mosaic tradition, the Bible put together by inserting the ancient myth of Adam and Eve, but also adding a new and original description of the building where the 'original sin '(and the famous rib of Sumerian origin) there is no trace (the first chapter of Genesis), here in the oldest part of the text Enoch (the Book of Watchers), almost at the same time - or was it just a question-and Answer? - It is said that bad, the serious one, the one with the capital, has spread in the world when some Angels, the Angels 'Vigilantes' in fact, spotted beautiful human females and decided to have them. They went down on the ground and took them, having their children from devastating and terrifying giant (God, poor man, then was forced to send the flood to clean everything and start over) and teaching them, in exchange, the secrets of herbs and roots .
Transgression to the cosmic spiritual beings between mortals and female, had circulated an impurity that, unlike Jewish ritual impurity without negative values \u200b\u200bethical and moral judgments, had the repulsive connotations of guilt. Fallen angels and demons and witchcraft and charming women. There were even then all the features to turn on the doom medieval burnings.
Tradition Moses and Enoch apocalyptic took different paths, whence came, after a century and processing complex and varied, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, and above all, their radical ideological and cultural differences about man and woman, birth and sex, sull'impurità and guilt, sin and salvation.
And if we feel like we can also observe that the angels who have joined the women there are also many tales of old. Imagine the sexual body of a man with quite a few of his order of wings and a seductive young woman with soft lines. He had thought so too when he told Apuleius the love between a god and a girl ? O Canova in his works of art? And if the source of the most recondite and archaic Judeo-Christian thought - re-proposed today by some left - was really, historically, a brutal, violent denial of the sweet story of Cupid and Psyche speaks of the ancient origins of the beautiful book by Anna Zesi
(3) published in recent days?
Sull'Apocalittica Jewish cf.
other post of this blog: "
Women and Judaism and its impurities " and "Myth and ideology
: original sin." By assumption Search more daring on the origin of the idea of \u200b\u200ban "encounter" between angels and women - including "Thoughts
Persians."
December 2010
1) Paolo Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic The and its history. The proposed dating is Sacchi.
2) P. Sacchi, The problem "apocalyptic" , published in "Credereoggi 'XIV, LXXX, 1994.
3) A. Zesi, Stories of Love and Psyche, The Golden Ass editions, 2010
