Fallible Prophets and Apostles?

What distinguishes the witness of the prophets and the apostles, so that it can have this significance for the existence of the congregation and its proclamation to the world? After all, they were men fallible as we are, children of their time as we are of ours, and their spiritual horizon was as limited as ours—in significant ways, even more limited than ours. Whoever enjoys that sort of thing can again and again demonstrate that their natural science, conception of the world, and also to a great extent their morality cannot be binding for us. They told all sorts of sagas and legends and at least made free use of all kinds of mythological material. In many things they said—and in some important propositions—they contradicted each other. With few exceptions they were not remarkable theologians. They have only their election and calling to commend them. But this counts! Their many-sided testimony has, in its own way and in its own place, one and the same center, subject and content: Jesus of Nazareth,… (Barth, Karl, p.59, ‘God Here and Now’,2006)

Assyrian Panels from the North-West palace of Nimrud

I took these photographs in 2000 at the British Museum. Unfortunately, the photo quality isn’t too good, because I was using a disposable camera without a flash. I’ve tried to enhance then a bit in an image editor. Luckily I took some notes, so I can tell you a bit about them.

This is a panel depicting King Ashurnasirpal, flanked by eagle-headed protective spirits. It comes (as do the rest of these exhibits) from the North-West palace of Nimrud in Assyria, and dates somewhere between 865-860 B.C.

This panel, along with another, stood at the head of a room. The surviving walls of which were otherwize panelled entirely with eagle-headed spirits and sacred trees.

Eagle-headed protective spirit between saced trees. The sacred trees were completed on adjoining panels.

Four-winged protective spirit, holding a mace, guarding one of the doors to the royal throne room.

In this panel, king Ashurnasirpal appears twice, dressed in ritual robes and holding the mace symbolising authority. In front of him there is a sacred tree possibly symbolising life, and he makes a gesture of worship to a god in a winged mask. The god, who may be the sun god Shamash, has a ring in one hand; an ancient Mesopotamian symbol of god-given kingship. Protective spirits are on either side, placed behind the royal throne.

Protective spirit with branch and carrying a deer. Guarded one of the doors to the royal thone room.

Sacred Tree

Palace of Nimrud links

king Ashurnasirpal and the Northwest Palace at Nimrud
Nimrud Palace Reliefs at the British Museum

Sacred space in the Bible

The most striking use of sacred space in the Old Testament appears to be employed to reflect the relationship that exists between God and Israel, His chosen people. The same understanding of sacred space is also apparent in the New Testament where the relationship is between God and ‘spiritual Israel’, through the person of Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:29).

The Solar Giant

…As the Philistine (Goliath) moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground… …David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s (own) sword and drew it from the scabbard. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword. 1 Samuel 17: 48–51 N.I.V

Behind the historicized myth of David and Goliath, lies an ancient symbolic tale of a definitive conflict between an often youthful hero and cyclopean giant.

We find a readily comparable version of the tale in Irish-Celic mythology of the Tuatha De Danann.

At the the second battle of Mag Tuired, the hero Lugh circumvents the field of battle hopping on one foot, with a single eye blazing, in imitation of the one-legged Fomorian enemy, and their leader (also Lugh’s grandfather) Balor of the evil eye. Balor’s enormous eye was infused with druidic magic, and required four men to lift the heavy lid. The gaze of Balor’s eye was devastating, and no one could resist it’s all destroying power, except Lugh. Using a slingshot, Lugh shot a stone directly into Balor’s eye, out through the back of the giant’s head, recoiling the dreadful power of the eye onto the Formorians, killing the entire army.

We meet another one-eyed giant of Irish mythology in the ‘The pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne’, called Sharvan. He is the Formorian guardian of the Rowan Tree of immortality, and is himself immortal and indestructible. When the lovers Diarmaid and Grainne seek refuge in the tree, Grainne is overcome with desire to eat the rowan berries, and so Diarmaid slays Sharvan with three strikes of the giant’s own iron club.

Sharvan is the counterpart of the cherubim and revolving sword of fire, that denies access to the tree of life in the Hebrew garden of Eden.

And he (Yahweh) caused to dwell the cherubs at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword whirling around, to guard the way to the Tree of Life. Genesis 3:24 L.T

The image of the revolving sword appears to be derived from the Mesopotamian glyph of the sun god Utu/Shamash; a stylized eight-spoked solar wheel comprised of four swords (as if in rotation) and four streams or rivers, emanating from the centre, comparable with the four rivers that flowed from the middle of the Hebrew paradise. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the island of immortality, said to be the source of all rivers, is surrounded by the ocean of death, that no one, apart from the sun god Shamash, could cross.

The glyph of Utu/Shamash represents the god’s own duel nature of wrath, symbolized by the sword, and of ambrosial bliss, symbolized by the rivers of life. This is the duel nature of the divinity, which functions as an impassable barrier to the transcendent realm.

The giant is an indestructible, unyielding, and merciless force that cannot be reckoned with, his single eye analogous with the all destroying nature of the sun, whose power is further extended through the giant’s weapon.

In the myth of David and Goliath, after David struck the giant in the forehead (his solar eye), he cuts off his head using the Philistine’s own sword. Again, in the case of Sharvan, the giant is slain with his own weapon.

The hero also shares in the self-same indestructible nature of the sun, and it is this adamantine quality that qualifies the hero alone with the ability to sustain the giant’s impenetrable solar glare, and turn the weapon inward upon it’s source, reversing the verdict of death to life.

The tale of Odysseus and his men caught inside the Cyclops Polyphemus’ cave, is another variation of the solar giant mythos. Here the all devouring divine nature is illustrated through the act of cannibalism. Polyphemus mercilessly devours Odysseus’ men, much like Kronos devouring his own children. Odysseus manages to beguile Polyphemus into drinking large quantities of wine until he falls into a drunken sleep. He then heats up the giant’s club, that has been sharpened into a stake, and with the help of four of his companions (compare the four attendants who lifted the giant eyelid of Balor), pierces the giant’s eye.

The Greek painting above represents the cosmic mystery primarily in solar terms, in contrast to the previous article that represented the same cosmic mystery though lunar imagery of the Bull and ambrosial cup. Aligned above the burning stake is a serpentine image of a vine, which seems to identify the stake with the tree of life. One of the four men holds a (lunar) cup below Polyphemus’ eye, catching the solar blood, Identifying it with the ambrosial drink, like the rivers of life flowing from the paradise of God.

The Iconic image of solar (eternal) essence arising from a lunar (temporal) vessel has a myriad of different religious associations, ranging from the Virgin Birth to the Holy grall, all pointing to the same primordial idea; that the temporal inexplicably gives birth to the eternal.

In Christian theology the same cosmic act is performed by Christ upon the cross, who, in the word’s of Matthew Henry:

He (Jesus) died, To bring us to God, and, in order thereunto, to rend that veil of guilt and wrath which interposed between us and him, to take away the cherubim and flaming sword, and to open the way to the tree of life.” Matthew Henry

In the footsteps of recreation

In Ge Hong’s (ca 280 – 340/360 AD) Baopuzi (master embracing simplicity) Neipian (Inner Chapters), the Pace of Yu (Yubu) is described in detail as a sequence of three movements comprising of nine steps (3X3), and is a ritual dance performed by daoist masters. This shamanic dance, also described as a limp, is modeled on Yu the great, who, walking by the ocean, witnessed some birds performing a dance, and used the same technique to overcome the floodwaters that threatened the country of nine regions.

It is also said that Yu’s limp was the result of an injury, caused by his unrelenting effort to control the floods. Yu also had the ability to transform himself into a bear, walking with a waddle known as a bears gait. The cosmic significance of Yu’s dance is further bound up in the ritual of Pacing the Big Dipper Constellation of 7 (+ 2 invisible = 9) stars.

The discovery of the Lo Shu magic tortoise square is also attributed to Yu, who witnessed a tortoise emerge from the Lo river, with a 3X3 shell pattern consisting of dot’s arranged from one to nine. when read either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, the Lo Shu calculated fifteen.

Nine was also the total of heads of Xiang Liu, killed by Yu. Xiang Liu had the body of a serpent, and was the servant of Gong Gong, the demon responsible for causing the Floods.

The defeat of the serpentine Xiang Liu is comparable with the slaying of the Hydra by Herakles, and in Norse Myth with the binding of the wolf fenrir, and, in particular, with the double-death of Thor and Iormungand, symbolizing the binding of cosmic chaos, and recreating existence in the revolving wheel of time.

Just as Yu attained complete mastery over the floodwaters, Thor (who also crushed the nine headed giant Thrivaldi) overcame the ocean serpent that surrounds the nine realms of the Nordic cosmos, and both through the act of self-sacrifice. After Thor crushed the head of Iormungand, he was engulfed in the venom of the serpent, and managed to take nine steps backward, before he fell down dead.

The Midgard serpent represents androgyny, the cosmos, and revolving time in particular, the head and the tail conjoining (The symbol of the Ouroboros) at the threshold of the old cosmic order and the new. As nine seems to represent the cosmic totality, it is a reasonable assumption to understand the nine symbolic steps of Thor after crushing the serpent’s head, as somehow taking him back to the beginning (the end and the beginning being one), and in the euhemerized version concerning Yu, the disaster of the land of nine realms (saved through nine sacred steps), was in fact, a mythological catastrophe of cosmic, rather than local, proportions. Again we have essentially the same idea in the Jewish Targum Onkelos, commenting on the protevangelium (proto gospel) of Genesis 3:15, regarding time’s end, known as Ikveta D’Meshicha, The Heels (or footsteps) of the Messiah:

He will remember what you did to him in the beginning, and you shall be observing him in the end.

According to Skaldskaparmal and the Ragnarsdrapa, Thor also had a previous encounter with the Midgard serpent, while on a fishing trip with the giant Hymir. Using an ox head as bait, Thor hooked the sea serpent, much to the distress of Hymnir, who, terrified, finally cut the line, and the serpent sank back down to the ocean’s depths, but not before receiving a blow to the head from the unshrinking Thunder god’s hammer Mjolnir. Comparatively, according to the Huainanzi, Yu, while crossing the Yellow river, was confronted with the appearance of a dragon, causing the boatman’s face to change colour. Yu, as resolute as his Norse counterpart, smiled, perceiving the dragon as a mere lizard. And with that, the dragon departed.

Yu is also a type of Flood hero, like Noah or Ziusudra, whose mythologies are closely tied with the careers of cosmic threshold gods, such as Thor, caught between the old world and the new, confronting universal destruction head on. The invention of alcohol, that is ascribed to Noah, is also said to of occurred during the reign of Yu, although the invention itself is accredited, either to Yu’s daughter, or a member of the emperor’s staff. Both Yu and Noah became drunk, which is a common motif, shared by many mythological victims. Noah’s nakedness may also be paralleled in an account from the Huainanzi, stating that Yu disrobed before passing though the Lo kingdom, to avoid disturbing custom. Yu’s limp, which is also a common motif, the result of either, an injury to the foot, or, as in the case of Jacob, to the hip joint, is also shared by Noah, in the Kabbalistic Sefer ha-Zohar, who was struck by a lion within the ark, and permanently lamed.

The nine step limping pace of Yu, based on the dance of birds, is also reflective of the Crane Dance (Geranos), mentioned by Plutarch in his account of Theseus. After rescuing the young men and women of Athens from the Minotaur, Theseus visited the island of Delos, and there they performed a dance, imitating the complexities of the labyrinth. Also in the Iliad (18:590) we have a reference to Ariadne’s dance floor at Cnossos, built by Daedalus, who also devised the Cretan Labyrinth, where again young men and woman performed their dance.

The labyrinth, is again, another representation of the cosmos, the beginning middle and end of all things, and like the androgynous Ouroboros serpent, the beginning and the end are one. Housed within the labyrinth is the bull, who like the snake, is an incarnation of the divine in temporal form. Labyrinth means ‘the palce of the double-axe’, and it is logical that it is by means of the double-axe that the bull is slain, but also reborn. Like Thor’s hammer, the double-edge nature of the weapon wields both death and life, and as in the case of the definitive battle with Iormungand, death and life occur simultaneously. This enigmatic cosmic act, where the divine partakes in the double nature of the universe, contains within the mystery of divine separation and reunion, represented by the cosmic opposites, including male and female, enacted in the mythos of the double-axe, by Ariadne (also the bride of the bull god Dionysos) and Theseus.