A luta com o Anjo

Bem, eu vou me dar ao trabalho de traduzir em capítulos curtos aqui um texto foda de Tracy mcnulty, chamado The whrestling with the angel, um texto realmente significativo, senão eu não o poria aqui.

Agora, peço o favor de se alguma alma caridosa tiver a disponibilidade ou masoquismo de passar por este blog empoeirado, que dê um alô, um "que texto legal" ou "que texto merda", ou simplesmente avisem se lêem, porque geralmente me sinto um autista, mantendo um blog que sequer é conhecido por judeus. Ok, o propósito do blog é aprofundar meus interesses e pesquisas, mas em relação a isto bastaria torná-lo secreto, o que me seria mais do que suficiente. Só pra saber se não estou escrevendo para D'us , este Alter sem Ego que, como bem sabem, nunca Responderá.

The wrestling with the Angel

Tracy mcnulty

"We have only the following account of Paul's famous conversion on the road to Damascus in the Acts:

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddendly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a Voice saying to him: "Saulo, why do you persecute me?" He asked: "Who are you, lord?". The reply canme, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.But get up and enter the city , and you will be told what you are to do'. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they had heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and through his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days, he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank"( Acts, 9:3-9).

Alain Badiou notes that after the event of Damascus, Paul turns away from any authorith other than the Voice that personally called upon him to become a subject. But what exactly does that Voice say? Although it speakes to him, it does not transmit specific directives or a particular interpretation of the gospel. Instead, it initiates an unscripted "conversion experience" that follows its own course , one that differs from bot Moises ans the Hebrew prophets, all of whom are convinced as mouthpieces for the speech of God.

What is the significance in Paul's writing of this fidelity to the Voice- the Voice that interpellates Paul on the road to Damascus, but also the inner voice of the Christian liberated from the law, the voice of freedom? In Paul's discourse, the Voice is opposed to Greek wisdom adn to Jewish signs and aligned with the mysterious "demonstration" of the spirit: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block ( skandalon) to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those that are called, bot Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God ( 1 Cor. 1:22- 24).

While the Voice has an authority that supercedes prophecy and reason, it is itself strangeli inarticulate. Consider this curious passage from the second letter to Corinthians, where Paul speaks in the third person of his interpellation by the Voice: "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught in the Paradise- and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter ( 2, Cor. 12: 2-4). He does not hear- or at least cannot convey- what the Voice says to him, but only the fact that it calls upon him. What I want to consider here is the status of this autority of Voice in Paul's discourse and its relation to the problem of faith. What is at stake in Paul's insistence that the Jews open theirs ears to a Voice beyond the Law? And why is the Jewish tradition unable or unwilling to hear this voice?

Emmanuel Levinas, in an essay entitled "The pact", comments on a passage from the Babyloniam Talmud concernig the handing down of the Law to the people of Israel. In this passage, the rabbis note in the scene of law-giving reported in Deuteronomy, the Israelites are commanded not only to obey each individual interdiction of the Law, but also to uphold "all the words of this Law". The Law is to be taken in its entirety in its general spirit. But why , Levinas asks, does the Law demand both a particular and a general form? He writes:

Can the adherence to the Law as a whole , to its general tenor, be distinguished from the "yes" which is sait to the particular laws it spells out? Naturally, there has to be a general commitment. The spirit in which a piece of legislation is made has to do be understood.. For there to be true inner adherence, this process of generalization is indispensable. But why is it necessary to distinguish between this knowledge of the general spirit , and the knowledge of its particular forms of expression? Because we cannot understand the spirit of any legislation without aknowledging the law its contains. These are two distincte procedures, and the distinction is justified from several particular points of view. Everyone responds to attempt to encapsulate Judaisme in a "few spiritual" principles. Everyone kis seduced by what might be called the angelic essence of the Torah, to which many verses and commandements can be reduce. This "internalization" of the Law enchants our liberal souls and we are inclined to reject anything which seems to resist the "rationality" or the "morality" of Torah. "

Although Paul's name never apperas here, the passage seems to engage with Paul's polemic not only in questioning the reduction of the law to its "spirit", but also in its affiirmation of the very reasoning that Paul criticizes under the joint headings os "Greek wisdom" and Jewish signs. Crucial to Levinas reading, however, is an inattention to anything like the Voice. He notes that "Judaisme has always been aware... of elements within it which can not be immediately internalized. Alongside the mishpatim, the law we call all recognize as just, there are hukkim, those unjustifiable laws in which Satan delights when he mocks the Torah. Despite the absurdity of the ritual of red heifer, the arcane alimentary prohibitions, and even the act of circumcision, Levinas argues that we cannot dismiss these sometimes incomprehensible adherences as unnecessary or irrelevant compared to the general adherence to the "spirit" of the law. The letter of the law offers a necessary check to what he calls "the angelic essence" of the Law, its purely spiritual dimension.

Levinas then reads the biblical story of Jacob's struggle with the Angel as a cautionary tale about the dangers of succumbing too readily to the "angelisme" of the Law. He writes: "There is a constant struggle within us between our two adherences: to the spirit and to what is know as the letter.Both are equally indispensable, which is why two separate acts are discerned in the acceptance of the Torah. Jacob's struggle with the Angel has te same meaning: the overcoming, in the existence of Israel, os the angelisme or not-worldliness of pure interiority. Look at the effort with which this victory is won! But is it really won? There is no victor. And when the Angel's clasp is released it is Jacob's religion which remains, a little bruised". The Angel represents "spirit", but also the lure of "pure interiority", an identification with the Law in which it would cease to be Other. Thus kit is important to Levinas'reading that the being with whom Jacob wrestles is not God, as Jacob himself believes, but an Angel. As a purely spiritual being", the Angel is "a principle of generosity, but no more than a principle. Of course, generosity demands an adherence. But the adherence to a principle is not enough; it brings temptation with it, and requires us to be wary and on our guard. " What exactly is the temptation? That general principles, and even more generous principles, can be inverted in the course of their application or, as Levinas puts it, "All generous throught is threatened by its own Stalinilism".

This threat is acknowledge in the rabbi's creation of the oral law, the Talmud. According do Levinas the Talmud "is concerned with the passage from the principle embodied in the Law to its possible execution, its concrete effects. If this passage were simply deducible, the Law, in its particular form, would not have demandede a separate adherence. Talmudistic casuistry tries "to identifie the precise moment within it when the general principle is at risk os turning into its opposite: is surveys the general from the standpoint of the particular". In this way, says Levinas, it "preserves us from ideology". In short, "the Talmud is the struggle with the Angel". On the onde hand, is is the struggle not to "recognize" the angel or to presume that one is familiar with its essence. On the other, it is also the admonition to struggle against a danger that presents itself under the guise of generosity- and perhapes even love".

... a continuar.