Routledge Library Editions: Myth, 4-Volume Set 9781138825253, 9781315730332, 9781138840607, 9781315732770

Table of contents :
Cover
Volume1
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Series Editor’s Foreword
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: The Student of Myth
Martin Buber: The Honorary Student
Buber as Student of Reality
Developing I-Thou Philosophy
Buber as Student and Teacher
Buber and Judaism
Buber and the Hebrew Bible
Buber and Jewish Religion
Buber as a Student of Myth
Buber and His Critics
Martin Buber's Legacy
Notes
Chapter 2: Buber's View of Myth
Problems in Buber's Approach
Testing Buber's Definition
Myths of Leadership
The Enoch Traditions
Enoch in the Hebrew Bible
Buber on the Ascension Motif
The Development of the Enoch Stories
Buber on the Later Enoch Stories
The Hasidic Enoch
Buber on the Hasidic Enoch
The Limitations of Buber's View
Notes
Chapter 3: Buber and the Bible
Myth and Biblical Studies
The Transition to History
Demythologizing the Bible
Buber as Biblical Exegete
Paganism and Monotheism
Myth in the Book of Job
Magic and the Bible
Myth and the New Testament
Notes
Chapter 4: The Meaning of Eden
Biblical Creation Myths
Buber and Creation Mythology
Myth, Genesis, and Good and Evil
Good and Evil and "I and Thou"
Genesis 1:1–3:24
Buber's View of Genesis
Deciding for Direction
Genesis and Buber's View of Myth
Notes
Chapter 5: The Exodus
The Social Meaning of Myth
Kingship of God in Biblical Myth
Myth, Ritual and Moses
The Sociology of the Blood Covenant
Reik's Psychological Approach
Buber and the Exodus
Buber's View of Moses
Communal Ritual in Exodus
Beyond Sociology: Buber and Smith
The Exodus Today
Notes
Chapter 6: Buber and Hasidic Myth
Hasidism in Judaism
Buber and the Hasidic Story
Hasidism in Modern Judaism
Buber's Changing Views of Hasidism
Examples of Hasidic Myth
Notes
Chapter 7: Myth as Language
Silence and Speech in Hasidic Myth
Gershom Scholem and Buber
Buber and Hasidic Language
Scholem and Hasidic Myth
Myth, Revelation, and Philosophy
Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav
Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav
Mystical Myth
Simplicity in Hasidic Myth
Redemption in Hasidic Myth
Buber's Popular Appeal
Notes
Chapter 8: Hasidism and Modernity
The Appeal of Hasidism Today
Reviving Jewish Religion
Yoav Elstein's Critique Op Buber
The Myth of Eternal Return
Buber's Version of "the Werewolf"
Purification from Pollution
Notes
Chapter 9 Evaluating Buber
Hasidism Amd Myth
Myth as Communication
Buber's Definition of Myth
The Purpose of Jewish Myth
A Deeper Insight into Myth
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Volume2
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Chapter One—The Structure of Myth
Chapter Two—Barthes: Myth as Meaningful Form
Chapter Three—Lévi-Strauss and the Problems of Oedipus
Chapter Four—Vernant: A Logic of the Equivocal
Chapter Five—Detienne: The Empirical Categories of Myth
Chapter Six—Vidal-Naquet: A Factotum of History
Chapter Seven—Loraux: The Myths of Death and Life
Chapter Eight—Gernet’s Legacy: A French New Historicism
Conclusion—The Place of the Gernet Center
Selected Bibliography
Index
Volume3
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Abbreviations
I: The Man
The Soul’s High Adventure: Campbell’s Comparative Mythology
Freud, Jung, and Campbell
Myth Versus Religion for Campbell
Interpreting Campbell: Hermeneutics and Comparative Mythology
The American Roots of Campbell’s Mythic Vision
II: The Work
The Twin Heroes: Campbell’s Solar/Lunar Vision of the Masculine
Campbell on Myth, Romantic Love, and Marriage
Campbell and Schopenhauer: Synchronicity and the Tragic Vision
Campbell, the Feminine Principle, and the Romantic Male Hero
The Chariot of the Hero: Myth and Metaphor in Campbell
The Rhetoric of Mythology and Science in Campbell’s Works
III: The Farther Reaches
Campbell and the “Vanilla-Frosted Temple”: From Myth to Multiplex
Campbell, Science Fiction, and Space Age Myths
Campbell and the Inklings—Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams
The Power of Wilderness: Campbell and the Ecological Imperative
Campbell, America, and the Individual as New Hero
Campbell and the Perennial Philosophy: Social Sciences, Mysticism, and Myth
A Joseph Campbell Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
Volume4
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Table of Contents
Figures
Acknowledgments
1: The Structural Analysis of Myth
The Nature of Myths
Time and History
Understanding Myths
Myth and the Cultural Order
Problems of Method
2: Indo-European Cultures as a Field of Ethnological Study
Introduction
The Social Organization of Indo-European Society
Social Stratification and the Political Order
The Indo-European Pantheon
3: The Wars of the Gods in Scandinavian Mythology
Introduction
The Scandinavian Pantheon in Icelandic Sources
The War Between the Giants and the Gods
The War Between the Aesir and the Vanir
Ragnarok
4: The Cycle of the Mead
Introduction
The Feast of Immortality
The Origin of the Mead
Sharing the Mead
The Lure of Consumption
The Bird and the Snake
5: The Magic Cauldron
Introduction
The Sons of Tuirill Biccreo
The Death of Cu Roi
The Second Branch of the Mabinogion
The Magic Cauldron
The Iron House
6: The Severed Head
Introduction
Dionysos
Pallas Athena
The Capture of the Mead
The Head of the Gorgo
The Labours of Herakles
The Voyage of the Argo
7: The Battles of Mag Tured
Introduction
The Six Immigrations
The First Battle of Mag Hired
The Second Battle of Mag Tured
Problems of Succession
The First Kings of the Hiatha De Danann
8: The Roman Kings
Introduction
The Foundation of Rome
Romans and Sabines
The Tarquinian Dynasty
9: The Unworthy King
Introduction
The Medieval Epics
Arthur and the Round Table
Charlemagne
The Fairy-Tales
The Development of Indo-European Mythology
References
Index of Names

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: MYTH

Volume 1

MARTIN BUBER ON MYTH

MARTIN BUBER ON MYTH An Introduction

S. DANIEL BRESLAUER

First published in 1990 This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1990 S. Daniel Breslauer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-82525-3 (Set) eISBN: 978-1-315-73033-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-138-84060-7 (Volume 1) eISBN: 978-1-315-73277-0 (Volume 1) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

MARTIN BUBER ON MYTH An Introduction S. Daniel Breslauer

(CP)

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. • NEW YORK & LONDON

1990

© 1990 S. Daniel Breslauer All rights reserved

Library

of

Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Breslauer, S. Daniel. Martin Buber on myth : an introduction / S. Daniel Breslauer. p. cm. — (Theorists of myth ; vol. 3) (Garland reference library of the humanities ; vol. 918) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 -8240-3721-9 (acid-free paper) 1. Buber, Martin, 1878-1965— Contributions in concept of myth. 2. Myth— History— 20th century. I. Title. II. Series. HE. Series: Garland reference library of the humanities ; vol. 918. B3213.B84B74 1990 291.1 '3 '092— dc20 90-38866 CIP

Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper, Manufactured in the United States of America

SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD As a Jewish thinker and philosopher of religion, Martin Buber needs no introduction. Daniel Breslauer, an authority on Buber and author of The Chrysalis o f Religion: A Guide to the Jewishness o f Buber's “I and T hou” provides a pioneering analysis of Buber as a theorist of myth. Breslauer not only points to Buber’s interpretation of myths worldwide but, far more, reconstructs the theory of myth implicit in Buber’s interpretation of Jewish myths in particular. Myth for Buber originates in the mythmaker’s encounter with God and, in recording that encounter, functions to evoke a similar encounter in the reader of the myth. Buber is hardly the sole theorist for whom myth serves to trigger experience, and Breslauer contrasts Buber’s view to the views of, among others, Mircea Eliade and Carl Jung. Where for Eliade myth liberates one from the fallen, present world and returns one to the time of the primordial experience that inspired the myth, for Buber myth enables one to garner in the everyday, present world an experience akin to the original experience. Where for Jung both experiences are really of the unconscious, for Buber both are truly of God. Breslauer most helpfully contrasts Buber’s theory of myth to the theories of various others—among them Rudolf Bultmann, Adolf Jensen, Theodor Reik, and William Robertson Smith. Breslauer does so in the process of presenting in detail Buber’s interpretations of the Biblical myths of creation, Adam and Eve, Enoch, Moses, Job, and Psalms. Where many, though not all, Biblicists have conventionally praised the Hebrew Bible as historical rather than mythic, Buber declares the Bible mythic and historical alike. Indeed, myth and history work

SERES EDITOR’S FOREWORD hand in hand. History roots myth in actual, concrete events, and myth transforms history from merely a record of past events to an everbeckoning opportunity for present ones. Myth keeps religion alive. Like most Biblicists, Buber still pits Judaism against paganism, but the opposition is no longer between history and myth. It is between one variety of myth and another. Breslauer attends most fully not to Biblical myths but to Hasidic ones. Here, too, he contrasts Buber’s view to the views of others— most notably, Gershom Scholem. Here, as elsewhere in the book, Breslauer continually places Buber’s theory of myth within his overall philosophy. Buber, we are told, asks of myth what he asks of life as a whole: openness to other persons and things as well as to God. Breslauer notes that Buber, for all his advocacy of myth, acknowledges its limitations—limitations that, it might be pointed out, are close to the ones that Jung, a fellow evangelist for myth, grants. For both Jung and Buber, myth can capture only a portion of the experience that engenders it. For Jung, the inexhaustibility of any of the archetypes that comprise the unconscious guarantees that myth will fall short of encompassing all of its subject. For Buber, the thirdperson, “I-It” nature of the medium skews the second-person, “I-Thou” message. Yet both laud myth for encompassing as much as it does. Both write to revive myth for modems, who miss its meaning and power by literalizing it. Both berate those who spurn myth as merely primitive. Where Buber, who subsumes myth under religion, urges modems to return to the myths of their traditional religions, Jung, who allows for secular myths, beseeches modems to seek myths outside of religion as well as within it. As admiring of Buber as Breslauer is, he is not uncritical. He concedes that Buber’s imaginative readings at times fit Buber’s theory better than the myths themselves. Breslauer faults Buber at once for defining myth too broadly and for taking the function of myth too narrowly. In passing, Breslauer gingerly broaches some of the criticism s o f B uber’s underlying philosophy itself— most conspicuously, the core distinction between “I-Thou” and “I-It.” Overall, Breslauer’s sympathetic and patient analysis makes his book a fine introduction to Martin Buber as theorist of myth.

CONTENTS

P R E F A C E .................................. ix

Chapter 1 The Student of Myth MARTIN BUBER: THE HONORARY STUDENT . . BUBER AS STUDENT OF R E A L I T Y .......... DEVELOPING I-THOU PHILOSOPHY ........ BUBER AS STUDENT AND T E A C H E R ........ BUBER AND J U D A I S M .................... B U B E R AND THE HEBREW B I B L E .......... BUBER AND JEWISH R E L I G I O N ............ BUBER AS A STUDENT OF M Y T H .......... BUBER AND HIS C R I T I C S ................ MARTIN BUBER'S LEGACY ................ N O T E S .................................

Chapter 2

3 4 7 12 14 16 19 22 28 33 35

Buber's View of Myth

PROBLEMS IN BUBER'S APPROACH ........ TESTING BUBER'S DEFINITION .......... MYTHS OF LEADERSHIP.................. THE ENOCH TRADITIONS ................ ENOCH IN THE HEBREW B I B L E ............ BUBER ON THE ASCENSION M O T I F ........

V

49 50 53 55 59 63

vi

CONTENTS

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENOCH STORIES . BUBER ON THE LATER ENOCH STORIES . . . THE HASIDIC E N O C H ...................... BUBER ON THE HASIDIC E N O C H ............ THE LIMITATIONS OF BUBER'S VIEW . . . . N O T E S ...................................

Chapter 3

66 70 74 77 79 81

Buber and the Bible

MYTH AND BIBLICAL S T U D I E S ............ 89 THE TRANSITION TO H I S T O R Y ............ 95 DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE BIBLE .............. 100 BUBER AS BIBLICAL E X E G E T E ............ 103 PAGANISM AND MONOTHEISM ................ 108 MYTH IN THE BOOK OF J O B ................ Ill MAGIC AND THE B I B L E .................... 118 MYTH AND THE NEW T E S T A M E N T .......... 125 N O T E S .................................. 131

Chapter 4

The Meaning of Eden

BIBLICAL CREATION MYTHS ................ BUBER AND CREATION M Y T H O L O G Y ........ MYTH, GENESIS, AND GOOD AND EVIL . . . GOOD AND EVIL AND "I AND THOU" .... GENESIS 1:1-3:24 BUBER'S VIEW OF GENESIS .............. DECIDING FOR DIRECTION ................ GENESIS AND BUBER'S VIEW OF MYTH . . . N O T E S .................................

Chapter 5

141 146 151 155

1 163 168 173 179

The Exodus

THE SOCIAL MEANING OF M Y T H ............ KINGSHIP OF GOD IN BIBLICAL MYTH ... MYTH, RITUAL AND M O S E S .............. THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE BLOOD COVENANT . REIK'S PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH .... BUBER AND THE E X O D U S ..................

185 189 194 200 204 208

CONTENTS v i i BUBER'S VIEW OF MOSES .............. COMMUNAL RITUAL IN EXODUS .......... BEYOND SOCIOLOGY: BUBER AND SMITH .. THE EXODUS T O D A Y .................... N O T E S .................................

214 216 222 226 228

Chapter 6 Buber And Hasidic Myth . HASIDISM IN JUDAISM ................ BUBER AND THE HASIDIC STORY ........ HASIDISM IN MODERN JUDAISM .......... BUBER'S CHANGING VIEWS OF HASIDISM .. EXAMPLES OF HASIDIC M Y T H ............ N O T E S .................................

Chapter 7

235 239 240 245 250 262

Myth as Language

SILENCE AND SPEECH IN HASIDIC MYTH .. GERSHOM SCHOLEM AND BUBER .......... BUBER AND HASIDIC L A N G U A G E .......... SCHOLEM AND HASIDIC M Y T H ............ MYTH, REVELATION, AND PHILOSOPHY . . . RABBI NAHMAN OF B R A T Z L A V ............ RABBI NAHMAN'S T A L E S ................ MYSTICAL M Y T H ........................ SIMPLICITY IN HASIDIC M Y T H .......... REDEMPTION IN HASIDIC M Y T H .......... BUBER'S POPULAR APPEAL .............. N O T E S .................................

267 271 274 277 279 283 286 289 293 297 300 306

Chapter 8 Hasidism And Modernity THE APPEAL OF HASIDISM T O D A Y ........ REVIVING JEWISH RELIGION ............ YOAV ELSTEIN'S CRITIQUE OF BUBER . . . THE MYTH OF ETERNAL R E T U R N .......... BUBER'S VERSION OF "THE WEREWOLF" . . PURIFICATION FROM POLLUTION ........ NOTES ..............................

317 321 328 330 335 339 349

v iii

CONTENTS

Chapter 9 Evaluating Buber HASIDISM AND M Y T H .................... MYTH AS COMMUNICATION .............. BUBER'S DEFINITION OF M Y T H .......... THE PURPOSE OF JEWISH M Y T H .......... A DEEPER INSIGHT INTO M Y T H .......... C O N C L U S I O N ........................... N O T E S .................................

353 356 359 362 366 369 371

BIBLIOGRAPHY

375

INDEX

.........................

387

PREFACE

This book summarizes and evaluates the contribution of Martin Buber as a theorist of myth. Although best known as an exponent of dialogical thinking and respected as an interpreter of Jewish religion, the Bible, and hasidism, a late flowering of Jewish mysticism, Buber also provides explicit guidelines for understanding and evaluating myths. Buber describes reality as twofold: people live either in a world of things, to which they relate as a subject controlling its objects, or in a world of self-conscious others, with whom one relates as fellow subjects. Human beings require both types of reality, but also a means of moving from one to the other. Buber understands myths as one such means by which people pass from I-It reality, the reality of one subject manipulating objects, to I-You meeting, the reality of dialogue among equal subjects. In studying myths, he focuses on the myths in the traditions he knows best, but offers his advice and interpretation of mythology and scholarship about mythology generally. ix

x

PREFACE

While some critical essays about Buber's approach to myth have appeared, they usually concentrate on his biblical scholarship, his relationship to other scholars, and the evolution of his thought. Despite these efforts, however, Buber's unique approach to myth suffers neglect. Too often critics focus on his catch-phrase "I and Thou" (or "I and You") without investigating his special application of that idea to myth. Because they look at the technical language rather than its relationship to Buber's ontology, these critics fail to grasp his special view of myth. He does not relegate myth to a primitive stage in human thought, an animistic stage in which people view reality anthropomorphically. Buber's distinction between I-You and IIt reality cannot be equated with the more normal distinction between emotional and rational modes of interacting with the world. Buber's view of myth needs particular study at the very least to distinguish it from the views of others using his same terminology for different purposes. Buber's use of I-Thou thinking as a characteristic of myth differs considerably from that of others using the same term. A contrast with other theories helps illuminate Buber's uniqueness, but Buber's peculiar theory of myth requires study in its own right. His theory develops on several levels, each of which requires its own discussion in keeping with both the subject matter and the method Buber uses. This book, therefore, offers a coherent and

PREFACE

xi

unified study focusing on Buber's approach to myth as part of his entire system of philosophy. That exposition sometimes contrasts Buber to others who share his language, such as Henri Frankfort and Ernst Cassirer, but also to those, such as Theodor Reik and Mircea Eliade, who do not. Since Buber focuses on biblical and Jewish myth, the following chapters look at those examples of mythic expression. Since, however, Buber uses these examples to illustrate his general theory of myth, and in turn of existence, the chapters examine his work as an interpretation of human myth­ making and of human experience generally. Buber's terminology and, more precisely, its translation into English often leads to confusion. Buber distinguishes between two ways a person interacts with the world. One way consists of manipulating things, of an individual subject using everything else as a mere object. He terms this relationship to reality "I-It." He describes the second way of interaction as "meeting" or "dialogue." By this he means that each participant in the meeting considers the other as an independent subject. He claims that such meetings do not manipulate others but enable them to express themselves, to "speak" (the terms "dialogue" or "speech" are misleading since Buber claims meeting occurs with both animate beings such as other people and inanimate objects such as a tree). The essential characteristic of this way of interacting with the world lies in its attitude: a willingness to consider the other participants as independent subjects

x ii

PREFACE

on their own. Buber called this relationship "Ich-Du." Because the German language distinguishes between the second person singular (thou) and the second person plural (you "all"), Buber's term was first translated as "I and Thou." Walter Kaufmann argues, correctly, against this translation since English uses the distinction between "thou" and "you" to designate archaic and modern usage rather than singular and plural. His new translation of Buber uses "I and You" in place of I and Thou. Throughout this book I fluctuate between the two usages. Although I prefer Kaufmann's term, most of the translations of Buber into English and nearly all the secondary sources use "I and Thou." When citing or summarizing these sources, I use that latter term. When describing Buber's views in my own language, however, I follow Kaufmann's lead. Although this inconsistency may be confusing, readers should recognize that the problem stems from Buber scholarship in English and cannot really be avoided. I begin by summarizing the importance and paradoxical nature of Buber's thought generally. The first chapter introduces Buber as person and thinker, suggesting the relevance of Buber's general philosophy and personal life as a Jew and scholar for understanding his interpretation of myth. The second chapter begins where the first concludes and looks more closely at Buber's investigation of myth. Myth has often been understood as an "explanation" of reality; Buber rejects that characterization, whether meant as a positive or negative valuation.

PREFACE x i i i The chapter concludes by contrasting Buber's understanding of the myth of Enoch with that of other scholars. The third chapter introduces the first major focus of Buber's study of mythology: myth in the Hebrew Bible. Scholars debate the presence and significance of myth in the Hebrew Bible. This chapter charts Buber's place in that debate. The following chapter focuses specifically on Buber's interpretation of the myths in Genesis and the myths from Persia that Buber felt completed and complemented those myths. Buber's view of such myth as a memory of "I and Thou" contrasts with the way other theorists of myth interpret the biblical stories of creation. The final chapter, centered on the Bible, focuses primarily on Buber's understanding of Moses and the legendary myths associated with him. Buber's rejection of sociological or psychological reductionism places him at odds with such theorists of myth as either W. Robertson Smith or Theodor Reik. The sixth chapter introduces Buber's view of hasidic myth and the criticism he received because of it. The chapter focuses on Buber's Jewish critics, but highlights how he sought to show the universal relevance of hasidic tales. The seventh chapter takes the controversy between Buber and Gershom Scholem as its point of departure but then focuses on Buber's understanding of myth as an analogy to language, an analogy clearly parallel to the arguments of Ernst Cassirer. The eighth chapter struggles with Buber's understanding

x iv

PREFACE

of hasidism as a response to modernity, contrasting his thought with those who identify hasidic religion with a strictly orthodox Jewish tradition. Although the first chapters in both the biblical section and the hasidic section introduce critical views of Buber, the ninth and final chapter of this book evaluates Buber as a theorist of myth. The chapter asks whether Buber's use of myth, despite many shortcomings, contributes to a modern appreciation of myth. The bibliography attached to this study does not aim at completeness. It begins by noting two general bibliographies, both of which, however, are limited to works written before 1978. Although they each provide points of departure for the student of Buber as theorist of myth, neither is fully satisfactory. The work by Willard Moonan provides an index entry on "Myth" that should be used with caution since neither is it exhaustive nor does the annotation always justify the inclusion of a particular essay under this rubric. The references included in the select bibliography attached here suggest the works to be consulted in further study of Buber as a theorist of myth. The various works cited, especially those by Friedman, Glatzer, and Wood also contain bibliographical information. Support for the preparation and publication of this book has been given by the Small Grant Fund of the University of Kansas. That support is gratefully acknowledged.

Martin Buber on Myth

Chapter 1 The Student of Myth

MARTIN BUBER: THE HONORARY STUDENT

European students often assemble to celebrate the birthday of a favorite teacher. They gather around the professor's house in the evening, serenade the chosen hero of the day, and raise a jubilant cry. While a frequent tribute to beloved educators in Europe, this celebration had never occurred among students at the Hebrew University in Israel. On the evening of February 8, 1963, however, the first such tribute took place. Over 500 students gathered to honor an eighty-five year old sage whom they had not even known as a teacher but whose writings had touched their lives and changed their views of reality. The evening festivities reached a heightened pitch. The man they honored appeared before the students. Two representatives approached him. They acknowledged his influence on them and conferred on him a singular title. 3

4

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

Henceforth he would be an honorary student of the Hebrew University. The man responded joyfully to the honor, remarking that while he had received many honorary degrees, now for the first time he had become an honorary student. Johan Huizinga, he commented, had called humanity "Homo Ludens," "Humanity the Player." In contrast, he considered study the distinctive mark of human life. The human being is a studying person: "who aspires to know the truth in order to erect upon it a structure worthy for people to inhabit."1 That man was Martin Buber, philosopher, translator, and interpreter of Judaism who spent his life learning how to construct a worthy structure for human existence.2

BUBER AS STUDENT OF REALITY

Buber's early life consisted of desperate attempts to derive order out of chaos.3 Born into an assimilated Jewish family in Vienna in 1878, he experienced emotional dislocation. His mother deserted her husband and child to follow a lover when the boy was only three years old. Sent to live with his scholarly grandfather, Solomon Buber, and his intellectual and forceful grandmother, Martin became something of a "child recluse." After his father's remarriage, he resisted reintegration into his primary family and later recorded suicidal thoughts at the age of fourteen that only Kantian philosophy resolved. His

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

5

early political and intellectual efforts gave coherence to a life that fate had seemed to tear apart. Buber "the honorary student" pursued an education framed by books. Later, however, he discovered that learning extends beyond such formal boundaries. A person learns not by assimilating knowledge from outside sources but by open meetings with others. Knowledge only appears as a set of "facts" a person can "master." "Humanity the student" fulfills its aspirations for knowledge by self-transformation; knowledge, Buber finally decided, grows from within, as a mark of the changes one undergoes because of meetings with other people. Reflecting on his development, Buber once commented that he had originally preferred the company of books to the company of other people. Eventually, however, he discovered that "the many bad experiences with men have nourished the meadow of my life as the noblest book could not do...."4 Buber's adventure as a teacher grew from an impulse leading him from reading books to meeting others. Buber turned from studying books as self-contained entities to seeing them as invitations to meetings with other people. His previous study created what the philosopher, translator, and student of Buber, Walter Kaufmann, called an "imposing and multidimensional achievement" that "won for him countless admirers."5 The diverse enterprises making up this achievement did not immediately form a "way," a single path

6

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

or direction. Only gradually did Buber's studies take shape as a coherent whole. The turning point came in 1914. Buber felt dissatisfied as the oracular mystic guiding his disciples from afar, but did not know the source of his dissatisfaction until an event in 1914 that he describes as "a conversion."6 He had enjoyed a morning of "religious enthusiasm" and when, in the early afternoon, a young man visited him, he treated him cordially but distantly. When Buber learned that the youth shortly thereafter committed suicide, he realized that he had avoided the "real" questions the man had asked. Upon reflection, Buber discovered that he had lived in one sort of reality: a selfabsorbed existence in which he alone appeared as a true "subject" and in which everything else appeared as a mere "object" of his subjectivity. In contrast, the youth had approached him hoping for another sort of reality: one in which independent subjects respect one another's autonomy and personal value. Buber resolved to give up "mysticism," by which he meant the selfabsorbed reality that blocked him from responding to the young man's real questions. As Buber developed his insight about the two types of reality that people experience, he learned the necessity of each in any human life. This lesson gradually impressed itself on him, not the least because in 1921 he began a personal relationship with Franz Rosenzweig that revealed the ideal of

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

7

interpersonal meeting just as the earlier "conversion experience" revealed the inadequacy of self-absorption. While Franz Rosenzweig, one of the central figures in modern Jewish thought and, with Buber, a leading exponent of Jewish existentialism, had met Buber previously to 1921, that reacquaintance proved a critical moment for both thinkers.7 Rosenzweig, previously distrustful of Buber, discovered him no longer the "mystic" he had been before. Buber found in Rosenzweig another philosopher of dialogue who could help him develop his earlier insight about reality. Rosenzweig provided Buber with a forum, his newly created Jewish school for adults, the Freies Judisches Lehrhaus, in which to expound his ideas. Buber did so in a set of lectures on religion as presence, lectures that eventually became his seminal offering, I and Thou.8

DEVELOPING I-THOU PHILOSOPHY Under the impact of Rosenzweig and the stimulus of preparing public lectures, Buber clarified his original insight into two ways people experience reality. Human beings relate to the world and to each other in one of two ways. The human self (the "I") may seek to manipulate what stands over and against it (the "It"). The human self may also encounter the other as an "I", as true self on its own (as a "Thou"). At first, these two alternatives appear as ways of

8

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

looking at the world. Buber, however, insists that they are ways of constructing the world. When people talk "at" the world, they have constructed it as a set of things. When people talk "with" the world, they have constructed it as a universe of discourse. This dialogical terminology may seem metaphorical. When recognizing others as independent subjects, it is as if we addressed them and they addressed us; when manipulating the world it is as if we were speaking at an audience. Buber denies that his terms are metaphorical. Actions are also language. What people do either addresses the world or assaults it. He calls the two modes of being in the world the "two basic words" that "establish a mode of existence." As Ronald Gregor Smith puts it, these are words that "being spoken... bring about existence."9 Buber's insistence that his two basic words constitute more than ways of interpreting the world forms the foundation of his entire corpus of work. Reality itself, he claims, changes with the change of human perspective. When human beings meet the world as a cluster of others, both they and their fellow subjects change one another. When human beings manipulate the world as a set of inferior objects, not only do they "see" the world differently, but the world itself and they themselves are different. How people live in the world, then, determines the very world within which they act. Buber, accordingly, offers an "ontology," a theory about reality. People construct reality depending upon their

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

9

choice of either dialogue with other subjects or manipulation of objects. Buber's view of the two realities does not, at least in theory, advocate one reality above another. Human beings need to inhabit both spheres. The realm of the word I-You provides the context for personal growth. People develop by meeting other subjects, by allowing the reality of other selves to challenge them, to call forth a response, to change them in one way or another. By saying "Thou" to others in the world, a person abandons the protective isolation that prevents an object from making demands upon a subject. The realm of I-It provides the material context in which people live. They cannot exist in an environment filled with independent selves, each of which requires acknowledgement of its unique reality. Alice, when she passes through the looking glass, it may be recalled, nearly starves because when she is served her meal each new dish introduces itself to her. The Red Queen refuses to let her "cut" anything with which she has such a personal relationship.10 Buber understands the necessity for impersonal relations and realizes that people require an I-It reality for their very existence. He notes that "The basic relation of man to the It-world includes ... the preservation, alleviation, and equipment of human life."11 Without that type of reality, human life would wither and die. Human beings create a framework of institutions and

10

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

interconnections. They build homes, oversee businesses, and organize activities. Each of these has a utilitarian function. People use other people and other things. They think of themselves as "I" and everything else as a tool, an instrument of their desire, an "It." This person is not a selfcontained being but a "banker" or a "client" or a "teacher." These "roles" replace the living people who, while fulfilling these roles, also think of themselves as "I." Buber objects, however, when people subsist only in I-It reality. By itself IIt may seem oppressive but is no longer so for one "who is not confined to the It-world but free to step out of it again and again into the world of relation."12 Moving into I-You reality allows a person flexibility, the potential for self-transformation, and a recognition of the variety possible in life. The manipulative "I" remains static; it controls the world for its own sake and does not, therefore, see a need for growth, change, or development. I-You reality, making use of the apparently identical material context, enhances human existence by demanding change. In such a reality, a person no longer remains a constant and unchanging entity. Rather, the person grows and develops in accordance with an activity, by participating in a meeting with others. Buber describes this development of personality as "an activity in which I participate without being able to appropriate it ... The person becomes conscious of himself as participating in being, as being-with, and thus as a

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

11

being."13 Because this participation involves action and reaction, the "I" addressing the "thou" cannot remain unmoved and unchanged. I-You reality does not occur "outside" of normal human living, but within an everyday context. Saying "Thou" occurs as the material environment slips into the background, as a context for a meeting rather than as the purpose of the meeting, when the living others become more important for themselves than for what they represent. On such occasions, Buber suggests, people engage with one another without thought of gain or consequence; they respond to the humanity of the other person standing with them. Such a meeting must occur within the material context provided by I-It reality since Buber contends that I-You reality can "never act independently upon life" but must rather emerge "in the world— with its force which penetrates and transforms the Itworld. "14 Sometimes the formal purpose of a business meeting, of a social gathering, of a commercial exchange gives way to a more spontaneous response. When this occurs, the other whom the "I" encounters no longer assumes a "role." That other stands as an independent "I" that addresses another "I" as a living person. Both participants affirm the other as an "I" and affirm themselves as a living "Thou," as a responding person. Both subjects in such an exchange open themselves to vulnerability. They both allow the other to make demands upon them; they perceive the other as a full self with needs, desires, and legitimate

12

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

concerns. This meeting of equals usually leaves each participant transformed.

BUBER AS STUDENT AND TEACHER

Buber's view of reality suggests that the I-It world offers a point of departure for I-You meeting. Nevertheless, that I-It reality often becomes impenetrable and sometimes seeks to engulf humanity, claiming for itself exclusive truth. Buber laments the case of the man who, when faced by I-It reality, "lets it have its way, the relentlessly growing It-world grows over him like weeds...."15 Responding to that concern, Buber, the student, became Buber the teacher, learning how to be a pedagogue of I-You meeting, studying education itself as a key to releasing modern people from enslavement to I-It reality.16 Buber understands that teachers, in order to fulfill their educational task, must remain aloof from their pupils. He concedes that while teachers expect students to say "Thou" to them, they cannot relinquish control by saying "Thou" to their pupils: "the educational relationship is incompatible with complete mutuality."17 Buber, as teacher, taught his pupils his own technique of learning: that of heeding a message that demands response. The educational setting draws attention to, even if it cannot exemplify, the reality shaped by I-You meeting.

THE STUDENT OF MYTH

13

Such teaching about reality entailed a critique of a political arena often capable of recognizing I-It truths alone. Buber's teaching in Germany under the Nazis from 1933 to 1938 exemplified his thinking that political forms need not repress I-You meeting. He wrote of the "Kingship of God" as an antidote to the "Kingship of the Reich." He explored how Judaism generally and the Bible in particular offered a critique and alternative to Nazism. Delivering an address at the Frankfort Lehrhaus in 1934, Buber spoke of the spirit "in search of its own reality. That is why it takes possession of man for the sake of hallowing the world."18 Buber taught his students to look beyond the reality forged by political institutions to seek the alternative reality of the spirit, of I-You meeting. As Maurice Friedman suggests, the Nazis "dimly sensed that his spiritual resistance represented a danger for their 'new order.'" Buber's alternative order created by human beings opening themselves to one another contradicted the Nazi vision of a controlled society.19 He continued as a student of I-You reality even in Hitler's demonic bureaucracy of the I-It. Even after emigrating from Germany to Israel in 1938, Buber continued pursuing the reality he had glimpsed in 1914 and sharing his discoveries with others. In the land of Israel disciples now expected practical advice and pragmatic political directives. The advice he provided often shocked his audience. He admonished his students to prepare themselves for I-You meeting rather

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

than remain fixated on I-It concerns. When the British White Paper of 1939 appeared, denying Jews the right to escape from Nazi Germany to Israel, many Zionists bewailed the act. Buber accused these leaders of losing sight of the true problem. Zionists should learn a lesson from this failure. "We relegated the banner of Zion to a political interest," he commented. Rather than focus on the I-It sphere of political reality, Buber advocated creating an environment of dialogue in which Jew and Arab could join equally in mutuality. "The main thing," he declared, "is to set our hearts today in that direction, in which we must search, experiment, expand and win souls."20 Once again, as in Germany, he taught by drawing attention to a reality other than, but as accessible as, that of IIt political life.

BUBER AND JUDAISM

Buber's teaching, then, placed the possibility of I-You meeting before his students no matter what the content he chose. Originally, however, in his lectures for Franz Rosenzweig, he focused on the content of religion. He used the difference between I-It and I-You existence to posit two types of religion: one type allows its adherents the freedom to respond anew to stimuli from the past; the second type, however, stifles growth and learning by demanding adherence to a fixed system of

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15

dogmas and rituals.21 Buber dedicated his studies of religion to the former type, to learning the living dimensions of a responsive tradition. Buber's lectures, entitled "Religion as Presence," ranged beyond Jewish subjects to probe the meaning of religion in human life and explore the varied dimensions of human experience, concluding that human beings discover God through their interaction with one another, through their discovery of presence and being present, through the meeting of an "I" and a "Thou."22 Although early in his career Buber distinguished between "religiosity," of which he approved, and "religion," which he opposed, his later thought enabled him to explain himself more clearly. Buber, unlike other thinkers, did not reject institutional forms as such. Instead, he provided a test for determining their validity. He called institutional religion a "chrysalis" in which the religious spirit lay latent. Religious forms such as prayers, myths, and social activities enable people to recapture the original experience that religion reflects.23 A student of religion, according to Buber, works backward from the religious form to its originating spirit. Studying myth, for example, entails tracing the stages of development by which an event becomes a myth. Buber describes three such stages. In the first stage, people undergo an event shatters their normal expectations and resists expression in usual forms of communication. The second stage occurs when, reflecting on this event, people try

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

to communicate the inexpressible by creating various forms of expression such as stories, rituals, and theologies. These forms necessarily alter the remembered event since that event surpassed human means of expression. In a third and final stage, the forms stimulate an event similar to that which originally inspired their creation. Buber defines his tasks as a student of religion in relation to these three stages of development. He begins by describing as accurately as possible the religious forms of a particular tradition — whether these are myths, actions, or beliefs. They represent the reported data with which a student must begin. Buber, next, uses critical analysis to probe behind the forms of religion to describe the event that catalyzed their creation. He refuses to take the form as the primary datum. Neither the developed theology nor the details of a religious myth represent the facts of a religious event. They evade the real experience; Buber seeks to decode that experience from the relics left behind in the later forms. Finally, Buber assesses a myth's adequacy in stimulating the reemergence of spiritual life from the chrysalis of institutional forms.

BUBER AND THE HEBREW BIBLE

Buber approaches the Hebrew Bible as a document of religion exemplifying the

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17

evolution from I-You to I-It to renewed IYou reality. Buber's biblical scholarship includes a close study of textual traditions, historical context, and linguistic meaning. Working with Franz Rosenzweig, Buber created a translation of the Hebrew Bible into German that combined critical analysis of meaning with an evocative style. The volumes of that translation appeared from 1926 until its completion in 1962 (when Rosenzweig died in 1929 Buber continued his friend's labors, working alone). While the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem often criticized Buber's views, he acknowledged Buber's greatness as an interpreter and translator of the Bible. When the final and completed edition of the work appeared, Scholem commented that the thirty-five years of work and "the opportunity to rework it (the translation] in recent years" enabled Buber to make the final "definitive and complete" edition fully in harmony with Buber's thinking in his "mature years." The text of the Bible translation, then, represents Buber even more than Rosenzweig. Scholem pays tribute to Buber's knowledge and exegetical skill, commenting that people now turn to the Buber translation as they turn to medieval Jewish commentators for explanation and elucidation of the text.24 During the time he spent on that translation, Buber explicated his work and his understanding of the Bible in a series of books, monographs and articles that sought to describe the biblical text, its meaning and background; to discover behind

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

it an event experienced by ancient Israel that defied full expression; and to evoke a similar event in the lives of Buber's audience. Buber accepts the necessity for close study of the Bible as a document; historical and linguistic studies are needed to "remove layer after layer" from the received text "in order to arrive at the earliest of all." That earliest of all, however, is not a reconstruction of "the course of events themselves" but rather "the manner in which the participating people experienced those events." Thus Buber moves from the inherited form of religion to its experiential nucleus.25 Buber also analyzes the Bible for its relevance to modern Jews. He argues that close attention to the inherited biblical text enables modern Jews to recapture the immediacy of their religion. Each person must "enter into the dialogue of the ages" but must do so through community without sacrificing individuality.26 The biblical record, according to Buber, shows how as individuals absorb and apply a nation's literature and rituals, its spiritual creations, they discover God. By taking the cultural legacy of community seriously, people learn the path to their own personal meeting with the divine.27 Thus while biblical religion began as a response to an overpowering experience that exceeded human expression, institutional forms eventually replaced that spontaneous response, distorting ritual and cultic

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forms. A modern Jewish life, however, can regain access to the original stimulus by removing late accretions from biblical religion. Thus Buber explores the meaning of Genesis 1:1-11:9, noting, as do most biblical scholars, the fluctuating vocabulary, changing perspectives, and stylistic peculiarities. He moves beyond these details, however, to suggest the social and personal context within which the author's experience of reality so strongly challenged preconceived views that only such stories as those in the biblical record could express them. Finally, Buber offers a modern audience his evaluation of the "truth" which they, too, can experience by heeding the story. Similarly, Buber studies the "key words" of certain biblical psalms to illustrate their structure more clearly. He then suggests the human experience that gave rise to those psalms and finally invites his readers to discover the same experience themselves.28

BUBER AND JEWISH RELIGION

In its original context, that of Buber's lectures to the Frankfurt Lehrhaus, the new philosophy that he and Rosenzweig eventually used to decode biblical meaning proposed a new approach to studying Judaism. Buber applied his insight into living as meeting, his intuition about "presence" as a form of being, to the received Jewish tradition. The "meeting with a given religious

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

tradition" became an opportunity to revive a genuine encounter in which an "I" confirms a "Thou."29 This new understanding of Judaism changed Buber as a student of Jewish religion. Whereas he had formerly disparaged traditional forms of Jewish life, he learned to affirm the validity of those forms. His earlier approach had seemed to "create an artificial platform outside of the tradition." Now he studied Judaism as one attached "to the great sequence" of the past. He remained the great student of Jewish religion, but his attitude as student altered.30 As an exponent of how religion moves from I-You to I-It reality and back again, Buber approaches Judaism as a dynamic organism. While accepting the legacy of countless generations from the Jewish past, Buber finds a new way of unfolding the meaning transmitted by those generations; he sees each as an independent subject, as a "Thou" directly addressing him. This way of appropriating the past differs greatly from the traditional Jewish approach. Many traditional Jews express the distinctiveness of Judaism in terms of its covenantal commands. They define Judaism as a compendium of laws set by God before the Jewish people. To be a Jew entails, for them, obedience to that collection of imperatives. In contrast to these traditionalists, liberal Jewish thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries define the "essence" of Judaism in theological or philosophical ways as "ethical monotheism" or the "attainment of

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21

the absolute."31 Buber replaces both characterizations with one drawn from his own thinking. The Jew, he claims, "dares to relate himself to God in the immediacy of the I and Thou— as a Jew."32 That presupposition underlies Buber's exegesis of Judaism. He selects those forms of Jewish expression that he thinks most adequately express the daring event of immediate relationship to the divine. While he sometimes mentions rabbinic Judaism, he finds the "truer" aspects of Jewish religion in the mystical tradition of hasidism. Even in his study of hasidism, however, Buber begins with his principle of verification: those expressions of the tradition most likely to stimulate contemporary response represent the most genuine reports of the religious event. Buber himself describes his approach to Jewish religion in an open dialogue with Franz Rosenzweig explaining his inability to accept the entire tradition as a divine mandate. He refuses to "accept the laws and the statutes blindly" and asks again and again whether a particular law addresses him. Thus Buber admits that "at one time I may include myself in this Israel which is addressed, but at times, many times, I cannot."33 Buber's view of reality as divided into I-You and I-It realms teaches him to evaluate the truth claims of a tradition by its ability to open the way to I-You. When Buber finds a tradition allowing him to do so, he accepts it; when he finds it blocking his way, he rejects it. He admits that his construction of Judaism

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

represents neither an orthodoxy nor a heterodoxy but a "personal standpoint."34 That approach to Judaism enables Buber to take a more positive view of Jewish mythology than many of his contemporary scholars. He welcomes myth as another portal to I-You meeting no less valuable than ritual or theology.

BUBER AS A STUDENT OF MYTH

Buber finds in Jewish myth the best expression of Jewish religion; myth provides the most effective I-It medium into which a religion can convert I-You reality and the most flexible form out of which religion can allow I-You reality to emerge. Some scholars like Ignac Goldziher, one of the German-Jewish Semiticists of the nineteenth century, evolve evolutionary schemes to oppose "the confusion of the Mythical and the Religious." Goldziher attributes myth to an early and irrational stage of human thinking. As human thought progresses, religion develops using myth as its raw material. Finally, religion outgrows its mythic origins and becomes purely rational. Religion moves from a primitive world view to the stage at which it can "sever its connexion (sic) with Mythology and unite itself with the scientific consciousness."35 Most contemporary scholars of religion no longer accept such a negative view of mythology. Alan F. Segal, for example, denies that the term "myth" implies a false story. While "foolish myths" do exist, that

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23

is myths that fail to function adequately for their believers, other myths convey a truthful picture of reality for their adherents. Segal's positive exposition of the term exemplifies a general viewpoint now widely shared by students of Judaism and Christianity.36 Buber's theory of myth grows out of his view of reality. Zeev Levy, an Israeli scholar of modern Jewish Existentialist thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig and Moshe Swarcz who uses their thought to illuminate general problems of contemporary theology and philosophy, shows how Buber's general approach to reality, teaching, and religion shaped his view of myth.37 Myth for Buber, Levy indicates, evolves from the natural response of the human spirit, expressing the memory of a meeting, and acting as a psychological stimulus for future human meetings. A myth represents an I-It version of an event people experienced in I-You reality. This view of myth draws, as does all Buber's thinking, on his insight into the two ways of relating to reality: I-It and IThou.38 Buber had studied Jewish myth before coming to his I-You insight. His later presentations of biblical myth and hasidic myth reflect that insight. The insight itself suggests that human communication inevitably impoverishes the reality it seeks to transmit. Human beings address the world in the immediacy of I-You meeting and manipulate it through I-It distancing. Myth reflects this duality as a

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

necessary I-It recapitulation of an original I-You meeting. Myth, in this way, resembles all human forms of communication and teaching. Such efforts at recording I-You meeting in I-It language face the same difficulties. Human beings seek to convey the immediacy of event in reflective words. Buber suggests that any teaching "stands ready to become a You ... at any time, opening up the You-world."39 For Buber, then, myth serves the I-You relationship even while using I-It language. As such, it holds the positive potential of leading into new I-You experiences but also the negative potential of closing off such possibilities. Buber's view of the relationship of myth and religion makes him wary of institutionalized myth. He feels that myth, as part of religion, reflects a genuine IYou reality. Religious institutions can appropriate myth as a means of preventing new personal encounters with I-You reality. This possibility explains Buber's ambivalence toward myth. He approves of myth only when its relationship to I-You meeting remains uncontaminated by later structures. Buber regards myth favorably, characterizing it as an early and immediate response to an I-You meeting. When religion accepts myth as part of its own tradition, however, it alters its nature. Religion fixes myth at a stage in its development; it exalts the "I-It" form the response has taken rather than the I-You meeting to which the form points. Thus Buber considers myth either "the noblest freedom for a generation that lives it meaningfully," or

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25

"the most miserable slavery for the habitual inheritors who merely accept it."40 Buber uses a biological analogy to compare positive and negative religion. Religion either flows freely through a culture as its life's blood or becomes so thick and clogged that the culture cannot survive. All cultures need religion, just as bodies need blood to survive; hardening of religion, however, like hardening of the arteries, causes death. By using myth, religion infuses it with its own positive and negative attributes. Myth, then, can either carry the living nourishment of I-You reality or harden and thus prevent the easy transition from I-It to I-You experience.41 Buber, for example, agrees with many thinkers that the "myth of the hero" represents a central feature in many cultures.42 Buber locates the creation of that myth in the meeting between "the sublimest event, the life that he has lived" and "the profound emotion of the simple." He claims that "the greater the experienced event, so much the more compelling the mythforming power." The event of the hero's life, however, does not itself create the myth. Only reflection on that life, only that life as "refracted in a prism," becomes myth. The story arises when the experience demands expression and transmission. The myth as such, then, holds the key to the central event in religious life even if it does not literally describe that event.

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

Buber admits, however, that the creation of myth may sometimes undermine its validity. He notes that "the myth of the saviour already contains in germ the insignificant miracle and the misuse of the truth of salvation and redemption."43 Religion, the institutional representative that shapes lived experience into I-It phenomenon, may keep myth at the I-It level of reality. Buber verifies myth according to its purpose and function. In this case, each person who hears the myth must stand once again before the master, turn to the central man who "brings to the teaching no new element, rather fulfills it; he raises it out of the unrecognized into the recognized...."44 Telling the myth of the savior makes that man present once again and enables others to stand before him. Sometimes the custodians of myth emphasize the literal details of its story rather than the experience to which it points. When that happens, myth loses both its veracity as a report of the past and its truth as a point of departure for the present. The story of the hero, then, becomes a set of doctrines in which one must believe, a tale of miracles in which one must have faith, a doctrine rather than a way of living.45 In that case, Buber comments, religion "holds religiousness in chains."46 He decries the degeneration of mythic religion in modern times. Buber views myth as a special type < of story: a mythic story begins in an I-You event that defies rational explanation; it takes shape in an effort to transmit that

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27

irrational event; it functions pedagogically to teach of the I-You reality and stimulates a renewal of that reality. Hasidic tales, Buber thinks, follow this mythic paradigm, although at times he calls them legends and at other times merely tales. Thus he introduces a collection of hasidic tales by suggesting the purpose of storytelling itself, A disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, Buber relates, was once asked to tell a story. He replied that a story must be told so that "it constitutes help in itself." To illustrate that point the disciple told how his lame grandfather had once described the Baal Shem Tov's dancing at prayer. While describing the event, the grandfather could not contain himself. Words alone did not convey his meaning, so he began to dance. "From that hour on he was cured of his lameness. That's the way to tell a story."47 The story sought to transmit the I-You reality created by the Baal Shem; telling the story should move beyond the details of the tale to recapture its I-You vitality; the grandfather's curative dance represents the renewed I-You truth. Buber concentrates on Jewish myths for the same purpose the grandfather told of the Baal Shem Tov, but he aims at curing a lameness of the spirit rather than a lameness of the limbs. Buber studies Jewish myth to separate the "false" I-It encrusted part from the living myth that can point to a vital Judaism for modern Jews. Buber advocates Jewish myth because he laments that modern people no longer recognize the possibility

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

of I-You meeting; they have lost their sensitivity to interhuman relationship. He notes that as human beings become incapable of relating to mythic images they also lose the ability to enter into relationship with one another and with God. He offers his analysis of myth to help the person he calls a "spiritual pupil" who no longer knows how to decode the stories about humanity and God to "catch a glimpse of the appearance of the Absolute."48 Buber explicates myth so that such students might reclaim Jewish myth as the center of Judaic religious life. This theory of myth applies to nonJewish myth no less than Jewish. Buber himself looked beyond Judaism to the myths of world religions. He compiled and translated Chinese ghost stories, retold Finnish legends, collected Celtic tales, and compiled the testimonies of religious mystics from greatly diverse traditions. Buber's work as translator and interpreter of world mythology won him an admiring audience. Buber as theorist of myth hopes that Jews and non-Jews alike will learn to glimpse the possibility of I-You reality by reading back from a myth to its originating event and leaping forward from it to an IYou meeting of their own.

BUBER AND HIS CRITICS

Each of Buber's contentions about myth met opposition. Scholars opposed his view

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29

of reality as sentimental and dogmatic; they objected to his relegation of myth to a pedagogic purpose. Jews often found his reconstruction of Judaism untenable. Scholarly debate centers on several key concerns over the origin, meaning, and function of myth. As noted throughout this study, Buber often engaged other scholars in debate. He argued against Jewish thinkers who refused to allow myth a place in Jewish religion; he opposed "mythologists" who relegated myth to primitive thinking; he corrected biblical scholars who, in his view, misinterpreted mythic texts. Appropriate reference to these thinkers occurs throughout this study (as in the following summary of Buber's dispute with Jung). Because this introduction to Buber as a theorist of myth, however, seeks above all to illuminate the unique aspect of Buber's thought, it does not project a comparative picture of Buber. This study introduces comparisons of Buber's approach to alternative theories of myth only as a means of clarifying Buber's own position.49 Buber's commitment to I-You reality leads him to criticize theorists of myth who, he feels, relegate it to I-It existence. While Buber admits that myth subsists as an expression of the basic word I-It, he expects theorists of myth to push behind and beyond phenomenal reality to glimpse the possibility of saying I-You. Buber demands an openness not just to other people but to "works of the spirit." He therefore objects when theorists reduce myth to a function of the psyche, of social

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

needs, or of the human imagination. His controversy with Carl Gustav Jung that shocked many supporters of both thinkers when it burst into openness in 1951 demonstrates how his view of reality conditioned not only his interpretation of myth but his acceptance or rejection of other theorists of myth.50 Scholars discussing the disagreement between Buber and Jung often couch their analysis in personal terms. Some criticize Buber's "underhanded way of doing holy business" and wonder why Buber cannot use his renowned gift for open dialogue to appreciate Jung. Others claim that "Buber was ready to enter into dialogue with Jung but Jung did not want a dialogue with Buber."51 Actually, the two differed on the source and therefore, for Buber, the truth of myth. Buber claims that Jung locates myth within the human psyche. He objects that Jung thereby makes religion "a relation to psychic events ... to events of one's own soul...." If myth arises out of inner human prompting, not in relationship to an external event, then Buber has entirely misunderstood its meaning. Buber cannot admit that myth derives from inside a person if he is to consider myth an accurate record of an externally real event.52 A psychological analysis of myth has even more devastating consequences for Buber. Buber recognizes that Jung defines truth in relationship to the human subject. God exists for that subject as a psychic phenomenon, as an element in the soul.53 Were that the case, then myth testifies to

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an object in I-It reality; myth can be known as a "thing." The problem seemstobe one of knowledge. How can the truth of myth be known? Jung seems to think that it is known by looking inward at the human psyche; Buber believes it can be known by looking outward to I-You reality. Indeed, Jung criticizes Buber for seeking a "knowledge" of God, and Buber laments Jung's lack of imagination, being unable even to conceive of a view of knowledge different from his own.54 The real crux, however, is ontological, not epistemological— concerned with reality itself, not with how to know reality. Jung denies the realm of I-You as an independent and verifiable sphere of being; he must therefore reject Buber's claims that myth originates in such a sphere and points forward to it. Buber, however, builds his entire theory of myth on his construction of reality and cannot allow the validity of a divergent view. Students seeking to establish the integrity of myth felt threatened by Buber's emphasis on myth as a transitional and pedagogical link between two I-You meetings. Christians, for example, often recognize that Buber's interpretation of New Testament tales undermines canonical authority and the Christian claim to uniqueness.55 Rudolf Pannwitz, a Christian theologian and student of myth and Gnosticism with whom Buber corresponded on a range of shared concerns— political, poetical, and theological, criticized Buber's interpretation of Christianity and his favorable interpretation of hasidism. Both myths,

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Pannwitz contended, sought to explain reality. Buber denied an explanatory purpose for hasidic myth. Buber's view of myth's function impels him to evaluate myth. He tests each story he studies to see if it contains a vital message, if it really records an I-You meeting, if it really opens into a new I-You meeting. Only when he makes a positive judgment on both counts does he accept the story as genuine myth. Those, who like Pannwitz, ask myth to teach doctrinal truth must reject Buber's demand for responsive myth. Buber, by contrast, considers such doctrinal concerns unproductive. They work against myth by encrusting it in religious forms. Doctrine seeks to appropriate myth for itself and thereby neutralize its true purpose. Buber studies myth to discover the I-You reality it indicates and thus conflicts with those who look to myth for propositional truths, truths that Buber associates only with I-It reality.56 The content of Buber's study often scandalizes students of Jewish religion. Biblical scholars debate whether the Hebrew Bible contains "myth." Scholars such as Yehezkel Kaufmann, the renowned Israeli Biblical critic, think that while it retains remnants of myth, it neutralizes them. These biblical scholars criticize Buber for misunderstanding the advance made by the Bible over primitive religion.57 In a similar way, students of Jewish mysticism often claim that Buber has misunderstood the meaning of Jewish myth by ignoring their doctrinal foundations.58

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33

Many Jews exposed to Buber's view of Judaism would agree that he does not represent the tradition. Important Jewish thinkers add their weight to this view of Buber as an outsider to the tradition. As an exemplar of "humanity the student," Buber probes the meaning of Judaism without creating any single model of "Judaism," thereby alienating traditionalists, liberals, and Zionists alike.59 Buber's studies of reality, pedagogy, and Judaism challenge preconceptions held by many other scholars. Buber delights in raising such challenges as he seeks to free myth from the prison of the "mythologists" who analyze the dead form without looking at its living significance. He champions myth as a challenge to recapture the reality of a meeting between an I and a You.60

MARTIN BUBER'S LEGACY

Such, then, was the man whom the students of the Hebrew University sought out, even if he was not their teacher. He had written extensively on Jewish religion, but his lesson was a universal one: studying reality, pedagogy, and religion offers a new perspective on existence generally and on myth specifically. Such study, he teaches by exemplification, leads to a new way of seeing, a new way of interacting in the world.

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

Buber's writings on myth educate students on reality, learning, and religion generally. His teaching must be understood in this wider perspective. Responding to a challenge from Rudolf Pannwitz, whose correspondence with Buber over Christianity elicited the response noted above, Buber claimed that "I hold the myth to be indispensable; yet I do not hold it to be central, but man and ever again man. Myth must authenticate itself in man and not man in myth."61 A study of Buber the theorist of myth necessarily focuses on Buber's study of Jewish myth, but it cannot lose sight of Buber's more general concerns. When Buber died on June 13, 1965, mourned by world Jewry, his stature rested on his many achievements and on his exemplification of a life of learning. A life dedicated to learning had become a life of dialogue with other human beings, a Jewish life that entered into conversation with humanity as a whole. This study of Buber as theorist of myth enters into that same conversation.

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NOTES 1.

Aubrey Hodes reports this entire incident in his Martin Buber: An Intimate Portrait (New York: Viking, 1971), pp. 209-12. The cited words are given on p. 211. For "Homo Ludens," see Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1955).

2.

Among the many fine studies of Buber, the following are useful for those wishing an introduction to his life and thought: Samuel Hugo Bergman offers a brief but insightful overview of Buber's thinking in "Martin Buber: Life as Dialogue," in his Faith and Reason: Modern Jewish Thought, trans. and ed. Alfred Jospe (New York: Schocken, 1963), pp. 81-97; Eliezer Berkovits expresses the criticisms often raised by traditional and observant Jews of Buber's interpretation of Judaism, "Martin Buber's Religion of the Dialogue," in his Major Themes in Modern Philosophies of Judaism (New York: KTAV, 1974), pp. 68-137; Malcolm L. Diamond's Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960) presents an affectionate, clear, and generally positive evaluation of Buber; Maurice Friedman's early biography of Buber, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), remains a classic and more accessible to beginning readers than his definitive three volume work cited in

THE STUDENT OF MYTH later notes; Nahum N. Glatzer provides excellent analysis and personal reflection on Buber's thinking in "Aspects of Martin Buber's Thought," Modern Judaism 1:1 (1981) 1-16; those beginning study of Buber would do well to look at Alexander S. Kohanski, An Analytical Interpretation of Martin Buber's I and Thou, with a Biographical Introduction and Glossary (Woodbury, NY: Barron's, 1975) and his Martin Buber's Philosophy of Interhuman Relation: A Response to the Human Problematic of Our Time (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1982); Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber. The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XII (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967) collects several valuable studies on selected aspects of Buber's thought and includes both Buber's response to his critics and his early autobiographical fragments; a recent and useful work by Pamela Vermes, Buber on God and the Perfect Man, Brown Judaica Studies 13 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980) should also be consulted; see also S. Daniel Breslauer, The Chrysalis of Religion: A Guide to the Jewishness of Buber's "I and Thou" (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980). Laurence J. Silberstein's recent work Martin Buber's Social and Religious Thought: Alienation and the Quest For Meaning (New York: New York University Press, 1989) provides an insightful study of

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Buber, his intellectual influences, and his thought on language, myth, and religious revisionism. Many of Silberstein's conclusions parallel those advanced here although the focus of his study is considerably different. 3.

Haim Gordon provides an interpretation of Buber's life generally and his early life in particular that emphasizes this fact in his essay "The Sheltered Aesthete: A New Appraisal of Martin Buber's Life," in Haim Gordon and Jochanan Bloch, eds., Martin Buber : A Centenary Volume (New York: KTAV, 1984), pp. 25-39. Gordon notes that Buber himself increased the difficulties facing the biographer. When constructing his "autobiographical fragments," Gordon comments, Buber portrayed a linear development from triumph to triumph. Gordon suggests that "only a person who decided what role he played in history and has greatly enjoyed playing that role can write thus" (p. 30). The definitive study of Buber's biography is the threevolume work by Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Early Years, 1878-1923; Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Middle Years, 1923-1945, and Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Later Years, 1945-1964 (New York: Dutton, 1981).

4.

Martin Buber, Pointing the Wavf trans. and ed. Maurice S. Friedman (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 3.

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

5.

Walter Kaufmann, "Buber's Failures and Triumph," in Haim Gordon and Jochanan Bloch, eds., Martin Buber : A Centenary Volume (New York: KTAV, 1984), p. 4; see the entire article, pp. 3-18.

6.

See Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, eds. and trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Maurice Friedman (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 13-14; Maurice Friedman discusses this encounter with care and sympathy in The Early Years, pp. 187-92.

7.

See the discussion in Friedman, The Early Years, pp. 282-302 (contrast the view presented here with that of Horwitz) and in The Middle Years, pp. 31-58, in Rivka Horwitz, Buber's Wav to "I and Thou": The Development of Martin Buber's Thought and His "Religion as Presence" Lectures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1988), pp. 163-74. Buber's biography by itself makes a fascinating subject as several of the books mentioned in notes 1 and 2 make clear. While touching upon biographical aspects of Buber's development, such as the meeting with Rosenzweig mentioned here, the present study refers to Buber's life only to clarify his position as a theorist of myth.

8.

See Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. and intro. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's, 1970). Unless noted otherwise, references to I and Thou are to this translation. Kaufmann's long

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introduction, pp. 9-50, summarizes Buber's world view, his application of that view to the various studies he pursued, and the plan he abandoned after completing this first of a projected series of volumes. Kaufmann also raises a question which plagues any work citing Buber in translation. Buber uses the familiar term "Du" as an intimate form of the second person. In older English that usage could accurately be represented by "thou." Most translations of Buber, following this usage, speak of I-Thou relationships. Modern English, however, no longer uses "thou" in such an analogous way with Du. Kaufmann, then, translates Ich-Du as "IYou." While I usually follow that translation and write of an "I-You" meeting (relationship seems a formalistic phrase), I also prefer to speak of "thou" rather than "you." I apologize for the inconsistency but find it necessary to convey the sense of Buber's meaning. Rivka Horwitz' Buber's Wav to "I and Thou" traces the relationship between the lectures at the Lehrhaus and the book that grew out of it. See also her German edition of those lectures, Rivka Horwitz, Buber's Wav to "I and Thou": An Historical Analysis and the First Publication of Martin Buber's Lectures "Religion Als Gegenwart" (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1978).

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9.

Buber, I and Thou, p. 53. See also Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed. (New York: Scribner's, 1958), p. 3.

10. See Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1946), pp. 283-85. 11. Buber, I and Thou, p. 88. 12. Ibid., p. 100. 13. Ibid., p. 113. 14. Ibid., pp. 99-100. 15. Ibid., p . 96. 16. See Ernst Simon, "Martin Buber, the Educator", in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, the Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), pp. 543-76. 17. Buber, I and Thou, p. 178. 18. Martin Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1963), p. 180. Buber notes that the Nazis recognized the challenge implicit in his call for recognition of an alternative reality. They therefore, after this address, forbade him from further public activity. He comments, "thus again I became conscious of the fact that though

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the power of the spirit is the hidden kernel of history— its visible husk remains the spirit's lack of power" (p. 6 .) 19. The cited sentence comes from Friedman, The Middle Years, p. 160; the various incidents described here as well as general information on Buber's activities during the time of the Nazis can be found in that work, pp. 157-76. 20. Martin Buber, A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, ed. with commentary Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 138-42. 21. Buber's distinction between two types of religion resembles that of other thinkers who distinguish between dynamic religious movements begun by "charismatic" leaders in opposition to institutional forms and "routinized" movements in which bureaucratic authority and training legitimate leadership; see, for example, Max Weber's distinction among prophetic, priestly, and rabbinic religion in Ancient Judaism, eds. and trans. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (Glendale, IL: Free Press, 1952), pp. 17, 40, 98ff., 157, 386-88. On the tension between institutionalized religion and spontaneous religion see Thomas F. O'Dea, "Five Dilemmas in the Institutionalization of Religion," in his Sociology and the Study of Religion

42

THE STUDENT OF MYTH (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 24055. Buber differs from these thinkers because he refuses to use an evolutionary paradigm. Instead, he uses a cyclical model in which the primary religious event must necessarily be institutionalized in a form that reawakens the primal occurrence again and again. He also focuses on the effect of the religion on its believers rather than on the type of leadership involved.

22. Rivka Horwitz in Buber's Wav to "I and Thou" discusses these lectures and their importance for all of Buber's subsequent writings as well as the debt Buber owed to former thinkers, especially Ferdinand Ebner. 23. See Buber, I and Thou, pp. 148-50, 16668, and Breslauer, The Chrysalis of Religion. 24. See Gershom G. Scholem, "At the Completion of Buber's Translation of the Bible," in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, trans. Michael A. Meyer (New York: Schocken, 1971), pp. 314-19. 25. Martin Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), p. 16. Compare the technique and focus in idem., Kingship of God, 3rd ed., trans. Richard Scheimann (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-

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43

Davies (New York: Harper and Row, 1960); and several of the studies in On The Bible: Eighteen Studies, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1968). 26. Buber, Between Man and Man, pp. 7, 80. 27. See Martin Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), pp. 77, 174, 193. 28. See Martin Buber, Good and Evil: Two Interpretations (New York: Scribner's, 1953) . 29. See Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Martin Buber's Reception among Jews," Modern Judaism 6:2 (1986), p. 120. On the Jewishness of Buber's thinking despite its apparent deviation from traditional Judaism see also Breslauer, The Chrysalis of Religion; chapter 1, "I and Thou as a Jewish Hermeneutic," pp. 25-67, suggests how Buber evolved a new way of making Judaism alive for contemporary Jews. 30. See the discussion of this change by Samuel Hugo Bergman, "Martin Buber and Mysticism", in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), p. 303. 31. For an example of this thinking see the philosophy of Hermann Cohen. Wendell S. Dietrich's study Cohen and Troeltsch: Ethical Monotheistic

44

THE STUDENT OF MYTH Religion and Theory of Culture, Brown Judaic Series 120 (Atlanta, GA: Scholar's Press, 1986) examines a Jewish and Protestant expression of this philosophy. Dietrich discusses Cohen's argument against Jewish myth in relationship to Ernst Cassirer's theories on pp. 67-68.

32. Buber, On Judaism, p. 9. 33. Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1965), p. 114. 34. Buber, Israel and the World, p. 28. 35. Ignac Goldziher, Mythology Among the Hebrews and its Historical Development, trans. Russell Maretineau (New York: Cooper Square, 1967), pp. xxx, 2-15. 36. See Alan F. Segal, Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 3-4. 37. Zeev Levy, "Demythologization and Remythologization," in Bar Ilan Annual vol. 22-23 (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 1987), pp. 223-24; see the entire essay, pp. 205-7. 38. See Vermes, Buber on God, p. 31, who emphasizes how Buber's work led up to and drew upon his I-Thou thinking; see also Moshe Swarcz, Language, Myth, and

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45

Art (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1966), for a similar discussion. 39.

Buber, I and Thou,

p. 92.

40.

Buber, On Judaism,

p. 11.

41.

See Buber, Between Man andMan, p. 18; The Legend of the Baal Shem, p. 13.

42. Buber, Pointing the Wav, pp. 34-43; compare Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero and Other Writings, ed. Philip Freund (New York: Random House, 1959), pp. 3-96. 43. Buber,

ibid., p.

44. Ibid., p.

36.

39.

45. Buber contrasts the "myth" of the Sermon on the Mount with the set of "but I say unto you..." proclamations that follow it. He thinks that the former represents Jesus as hero whose life "fulfills" the law, that is it gives witness by its very essence to the possibility of living the law; the latter, however, represents I-It doctrines that must be believed, a catechism to be followed as authoritative. Ibid., p. 39. 46. Ibid., p . 36. 47. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), pp. v-vi.

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THE STUDENT OF MYTH

48. Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1952), p. 120. 49. Robert A. Segal presents a useful and bibliographically suggestive overview of theories of myth and groups them by helpful categories in his "In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth," Annals of Scholarship 1:1 (1980): 3-49. Isaiah Rabinovich presents a penetrating analysis of Jung's view of religion and its effect on modern literature in his Roots and Trends: Essays on Literature [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1967), pp. 40-54. 50. See Friedman, The Later Years, pp. 16976; Buber, Eclipse of God, pp. 78-89, 133-37. 51. Friedman, The Later Years, p. 172. 52. Buber, Eclipse of God, p. 79. 53. Ibid., pp. 133-34. 54. Friedman, The Later Years, pp. 173-76. 55. Thus John M. Oesterreicher, a pioneer in Inter-faith dialogue, recognizes the "incomplete" nature of Buber's understanding of Christianity. Buber, he feels, misconstrues the myths, rituals and dogmas of the New Testament. Buber, of course, applies his critical

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47

criteria of "authentic" myth to Judaism and Christianity alike and in this way cannot be charged with "discrimination." Perhaps Michael Wyschogrod understands this best when, in his introduction, he characterizes Buber's method as socratic stimulation rather than prophetic proclamation. See John M. Oesterreicher, The Unfinished Dialogue: Martin Buber and the Christian, intro. Edward A. Synan and Michael Wyschogrod (New York: Philosophical Library, 1986). 56. Friedman, The Middle Years, pp. 98-99, 176, 182. 57. See Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. and abridged Moshe Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 20, 60-63 and idem., Toldot Haemunah HaYisraelit, vol. I (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1937), pp. 9-11. Compare the discussions, for example, in Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism: Biblical Criticism From Max Weber to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), especially pp. 2, 18-35; note the argument against such a view presented by Benjamin Uffenheimer, "Myth and Reality in Ancient Israel," in The Origins and Diversity of Axial Civilization, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Albany, N Y : SUNY Press, 1986), pp. 136-67. Compare the discussion of different views of biblical myth in J. W. Rogerson, Myth in Old Testament

48

THE STUDENT OF MYTH Interpretation, BZAW 134 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974).

58. See the discussion in Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 1-16. Hayam Maccoby discusses myth in Judaism generally and as understood by both Buber and Gershom Scholem, the scholar who singlehandedly transformed the study of Jewish mysticism into an academic discipline, in his "The Greatness of Gershom Scholem," in Harold Bloom, ed., Gershom Scholem (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), pp. 137-54; compare the remarks on Buber's view of myth in Kohanski, Martin Buber's Philosophy of Interhuman Relation, pp. 159-60. 59. See the various responses to Buber in Berkovits, "Martin Buber,"; MendesFlohr, "Martin Buber's Reception among Jews," pp. 111-126, and Gershom G. Scholem, "Martin Buber's Judaism," in his On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, ed. Werner J. Dannhauser (New York: Schocken, 1978), pp. 126-71. 60. Buber, Between Man and Man, p. 214. 61. Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), pp. 248-49.

Chapter 2

Buber on Myth

PROBLEMS IN BUBER'S APPROACH

Buber claims that his studies of myth recapture "a corporeally real event" and show how the event was "impressed upon" human beings who "perceived and presented (it) as a divine, an absolute event." He contrasts true myths, reflecting real events occurring in I-You reality, to stories told as lessons about I-It reality, stories he calls "fables." He considers various kinds of stories (legends, tales about creation, tales about miracles, tales about good and evil) equally "mythic" if they report a real I-You event; they are not "mythic" if they merely reflect the author's imagination. Buber also judges among myths: he approves of those that accurately recall an I-You event and lead to its reenactment and deplores those that remain in I-It reality.1 Buber, however, never provides clear criteria for determining whether the I-You event he identifies with a myth actually occurred. By its very nature, I-You reality 49

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defies such verification. Buber responds subjectively, sometimes recognizing the truth of I-You reality in a story and sometimes judging such reality lacking. Once while discussing the New Testament with the Christian biblical scholar James Muilenburg, who generally favored Buber's insights into the Bible, Buber voiced doubt about the authenticity of a certain passage from the Gospel of Matthew. Muilenburg pressed him for evidence, and Buber refused to reply since he had no objective proof. Finally, Buber declared "It is merely my own subjective feeling.... I do not hear the voice of Jesus in it." Muilenburg became upset, although Buber reminded him that "he had been warned."2 Academic honesty demands more than an impressionistic judgment of a myth's truth.

TESTING BUBER'S DEFINITION This criticism of subjectivity affects Buber's view of myth because he attempts to establish the veracity of some myths and the illegitimacy of others. Scholars have long debated how to evaluate the truth claims of mythic stories, contesting the historicity of the narratives, the existential relevance of mythic meaning, and metaphysical accuracy of mythic world views.3 Insofar as Buber's I-You philosophy claims to verify or falsify the truth of any particular myth, the subjectivity of this method undermines its

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credibility. Buber, however, anticipates myth's use as a catalyst for entering I-You reality no less than he looks backward to its origins in I-You meeting. In this way he helps readers discover a personal meaning in the myths he discusses. This consequence of Buber's studies is no less subjective than his search for the origins of a myth. It proves valuable, nonetheless, for both academics and non­ academics interested in myth. Buber's aim in pointing to new possibilities of I-You meeting goes beyond merely academic exercises. He sought to involve readers in the material he presented. He claimed accuracy not only as an archeologist of the spirit, discovering the sources of myth, but also as a spiritual mentor, pointing the way for moderns seeking authentic living. Testing Buber's success in achieving this goal demands different standards from those normally used in academic studies. As Paul Mendes-Flohr contends, "It would thus be amiss to judge Buber's interpretive endeavor strictly by the standards of academic scholarship."4 Buber requires an academic reading that takes his own criterion of success as its point of departure. Nevertheless, any evaluation must itself guard against unwarranted subjectivity. Although Buber rejected evidence from I-It data to prove or disprove I-You reality, his own writing clearly takes place in I-It reality. Books represent secondary reflections on truth, not unmediated truth itself. As writings about myth, then, Buber's theory is susceptible to I-It

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evaluation. Haim Gordon suggests that as modern interpreters of Buber struggle to find a way of "clarifying" his thought, they should use Buber's own approach.5 That approach provides a model by which to weigh Buber's success or failure. Buber invites his readers to respond to the personal appeal of his words. He claims that he would fail in his own eyes were readers to stay at the analytic level. Buber feels that a reader should do more than assent to the power of a logical argument. He relates that once he convinced a man to abandon a preconceived belief and "shattered the security of his Weltanschauung." Buber realized, however, that he had failed in his ultimate purpose. He had won an argument but left a human being confused. His debating skills meant little if, after having persuaded a person to give up his traditional beliefs, he could not "live with him, win his trust through real life-relationship, help him to walk with me...."6 Buber sees his success depending less on his scholarly expertise than on his ability to move and inspire the reader to share his experience. This personal anecdote points to a criterion by which to judge Buber as a theorist of myth. Buber hopes to be taken seriously as a scholar of myth, as an academic who reveals the actual origins of myths, whose system of verification guides the study of myth. This present study must, therefore, summarize Buber's reported findings. The subjectivity of those findings, however, render them less than

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53

fully credible. Nevertheless, Buber remains an impressive theorist of myth because of his effect upon readers. The major focus of this study will be on Buber's retelling of myth, on his presentation of certain myths to enhance their appeal for modern readers. The final evaluation of Buber remains subjective: has Buber succeeded better than other scholars in conveying a modern meaning for ancient myths? While that conclusion must remain subjective, readers, by following Buber's method and comparing his interpretations with other scholars who study the same stories but use a different theory of myth, can reach their own decision about his success.

MYTHS OF LEADERSHIP

As noted earlier, Buber's concern for spontaneous religion in contrast to institutionalized religion parallels, even though it cannot be identified with, the distinction sociologist Max Weber makes between charismatic and routinized leadership. Weber sought to understand the connection between religious diversity and different types of leaders. When one leadership group contends against another, diversity takes on a political and readily observable shape. Such conflicts often arise between a routine or bureaucratic leadership group based on training or heredity and a more spontaneous type of leader drawing only upon personal qualities

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and relying only upon the acceptance of followers as self-justification. The former type favors continuity and stability; the latter initiates change and revolution.7 Weber recognized in myth, no less than in leadership, an indication of religious diversity. Folk religion may emphasize magic and heroism. A more middle class or bourgeois religion turns to "sentimental legend which has a tendency toward inwardness and edification." The Christian myth's "soteriological," or salvationoriented, approach responds both the social needs of the new bourgeois class and by harnessing the "widely diffused soteriological myths" that "generated a tremendous growth in pneumatic manifestations of charisma."8 Weber saw that the changes occurring in myths of heroes may indicate religious change and development. Myths of leaders reflect the diversity within a particular tradition. From the biblical period onward the myth of Enoch functioned in Judaism as such a view of leadership. Whether alluded to in a few biblical verses or associated with an extended mystical tradition, Enoch plays an important role in Jewish mythology. The myth itself developed in a complex evolution. The original story of Enoch seems lost in antiquity. Various texts from the Bible through eighteenth-century Jewish writings make use of Enoch as a religious hero. The references, however, are scattered and often seem haphazard. Enoch's role as charismatic hero, as an

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unconventional leader, remains constant in each of the variants although no single work presents the myth as a unified whole. When scholars consider an "Enoch tradition," they do so by piecing together fragments from different sources drawn from very distinctive times and places. Nonetheless, Judaic scholar and student of the Kabbalah Moshe Idel confirms a relationship among the early, later, and intermediate traditions about Enoch as a mystical and pious ideal. He concludes with a valuable methodological reflection in which he justifies using texts from diverse places and historical periods to create a coherent Enoch tradition. He carefully compares disparate texts from different periods in the development of the tradition and shows how some texts from a late period reflect a tradition more ancient than that found in earlier material. He shows that each variant reflects on Enoch as a model of the charismatic individual who, whether accepted by normative leaders or not, acts as an inspiration to others.9

THE ENOCH TRADITIONS

Buber, among others, interprets the Enoch tradition, commenting on which variants he considers genuine and which spurious. His main intent, however, seems to be evocative: Buber hopes to actualize Enoch as an ideal for contemporary readers.

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His attempt at presenting the Enoch tradition should be evaluated in relationship to the interpretations given by other scholars. Some scholars understand the Enoch story as one example of a general motif— that of the ascension of the hero. According to that myth, the hero ascends to the gods, who invest him with rulership and send him back to earth with special authority. Many cultures tell similar stories. A great man from the society performs heroic feats; he engages in special rituals; the gods seize him. Ascending to heaven or descending to the netherworld, he discovers a task, a social role. Returning to earth, he takes up his new duties and legitimates his authority by telling of the events that occurred on his journey. A sociological interpretation of such myths notes their implication for leadership. For example, Adolf E. Jensen, an ethnologist drawing on anthropological findings, exemplifies this interpretation.10 Jensen interprets the myth as a legitimation of social leadership. Myth, together with cult, expresses the social realities of a community. When religious leaders dominate a society, the myth tells of exalted spiritual souls who ascend to a deity and receive the authority to govern. An alternative version of this myth emphasizes that only the king can make such a celestial journey; civil rather than religious authority possesses the power to face the divine forces. In either case, the story records a test or ordeal through which leaders must pass. A legitimate leader must

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57

leaders must pass. A legitimate leader must prove worthy of leadership through divinely sanctioned trial. Jensen notes that the destination of the journey described depends upon the theological tradition of the culture involved. Those who assume a celestial deity tell of a visit to the heavens; those who picture the gods ruling in the underworld portray a descent to the netherworld. Every such myth, however, contains the theme of investiture with power after a divine examination. This myth of the hero who ascends to receive authorization as a leader seems to legitimate the religion of the status quo. On a psychological level, however, the myth symbolizes human frustrations and restlessness. Thus historian of religion Mircea Eliade explains that the myth acts as a coded symbol of inner human drives.11 The deepest desires of the human psyche surface in the mythic stories of primitive peoples. Such myths, he suggests, arise as human beings struggle to transcend the routine of daily life. Not only primitive people but every person, he contends, requires a sense of transcendence, of surpassing normal experience. People today, he explains, live diminished lives because they no longer experience the meaning that myth provides. Without the message given by ascension myths, they feel trapped in mundane existence. They intuit the futility of their lives but lack the mythic symbols needed to transcend their everyday lives. This desire motivates all people and belongs to no particular class or social stratum.

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Because of this view Eliade opposes the sociological interpretation often offered as an explanation of ascension myths. He claims instead that celestial flight "is not the monopoly of sovereigns" but rather portrays an ecstatic experience that should not be taken literally. The magical flight, in his view, has an existential referent. It expresses a "break with the universe of everyday" existence in which people transcend their limitations. Thus, unlike Jensen, Eliade interprets the myth of ascension not as a sociological tale legitimating leadership but as an expression of a universal longing for freedom and a universal need to surpass everyday life. When modern people read that myth, he claims, they can learn of their own yearning for the same experience of liberation and transcendence. Jewish tradition includes an exemplary ascension myth: that of Enoch. Although the Hebrew Bible provides only fragmentary evidence of this myth, and although later Jewish tradition offers strikingly dissimilar variants of the tradition, most scholars agree that the Enoch story as such exemplifies the ascension motif. Enoch, an antediluvian hero whom God "takes" and who, therefore, does not die, figures in both biblical and postbiblical Jewish stories as the model of the pious Jew whose mastery of spiritual mysteries enables him to travel in celestial spheres. Buber's explanation of the Enoch story as an exemplification of the ascension motif not only shows an alternative to the interpretations of Eliade

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and Jensen but also illustrates how his approach makes myth accessible for contemporary readers.

ENOCH IN THE HEBREW BIBLE

The story of Enoch exemplifies the basic motif of a hero's ascension. Enoch, according to all the versions, links heaven and earth in a cosmic journey. From the Hebrew Bible through the early modern version of the story told by Jewish mystics of the eighteenth century, however, few variants agree on much else. The Hebrew Bible provides only two references to Enoch. Genesis 4:17-18 relates that "Cain was intimate with his wife who conceived and gave birth to Enoch, so he built a city calling it by the name of his son Enoch." Genesis 5:18-24 tells of Enoch's birth, his fathering a son, and then his disappearance: Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters. Thus Enoch lived three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God and then was not, for God took him. Both these notices are very brief and give little information about Enoch. Biblical scholars therefore look to comparative Semitic stories to discover their meaning. Following the works of nineteenth century ethnologists like Max Muller, some critics see the 365 years mentioned in Genesis 5 as a veiled reference

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to the sun. They posit, by comparing the Bible with Babylonian stories, an original story of a nearly god-like being deified as the Sun God. Originally, the story told how a great hero was placed in the heavens and makes the circuit in 365 days, which corresponds to his life on earth.12 While attractive, this theory only accounts for the reference to Enoch in Genesis 5 and cannot really explain the differences between that story and the Babylonian myths to which it is compared. Other scholars such as Hermann Gunkel, the noted German biblical critic associated with form critical studies, explore the social and historical background that can explain the references to Enoch. Gunkel notes the parallels in Babylonian myth with Enoch and the common themes of leadership, walking with God, and the founding of cities linking this story to other biblical tales. In the course of development, Gunkel suggests, an author inserted the story and name of Enoch into the story of evolving human culture. Finally, the story took on a meaning of its own: Enoch symbolized religious piety rather than any other form of human culture.13 By its final stage the story removed earlier influences and transformed Enoch into a model of human piety. The biblical narrative includes brief hints of Enoch's history and significance. This lack of detail deprives the story of the specificity found in the sources from which it was taken, leaving it merely a suggestive indication of religious living and the rewards accompanying it.14

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The key phrase concerning Enoch in Genesis 5 claims that he "walked with God." Genesis 5:22 suggests that Enoch's walking with God occurred during his life. Genesis 5:24 is more ambiguous but can still be interpreted as a description of how Enoch lived on earth. In that case, the phrase refers to an ideal of religious living. The Bible applies that phrase to two early heroes, Enoch and Noah. When the biblical story turns from humanity's early generations to recount the history of the Israelites, the term for piety changes. God commands Abraham, the progenitor of the Hebrews, to "Walk before me and be perfect," (Genesis 17). From this time on, walking before God replaces "walking with God." The Bible has therefore reduced the Enoch myth to a legend about an early human hero, one whose greatness approaches but does not equal that of the founder of the Hebrew people. Enoch has been reduced to merely human size. The author reluctantly supplies only bare hints as to his significance. Reading the verses in Genesis, one learns little about the characteristics of the hero, what he experienced, or how he exemplified "walking with God." Modern biblical scholarship considers Genesis 4 part of the Yahwistic document, the product of an author during the times of the Davidic kings of Judah about 1000 B.C.E. (David, Solomon, Rehoboam), and ascribes most of Genesis 5 to the priestly document, finally compiled and edited about 450 B.C.E.15 That historical background

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illuminates the use of the Enoch story and its function in both narratives. The one characteristic that the mentions of Enoch in Genesis 4 and 5 share is that they associate him with an important social, cultural, or religious innovation. Ancient Israel in the time of the Yahwist experienced rapid urbanization and social change. The agricultural basis of the economy gave way before commerce and international trade. A tightly controlled central monarchy replaced the diffuse and autonomous organization of regional groups. The story of Enoch suggests a double truth in Genesis 4. Urbanization occurs as a necessity of human progress and survival, but it derives from the violent, painful aspects of human nature. Enoch, whose birth provides a catalyst for change in primal times, symbolizes the new, and apparently disturbing impetus to urban life experienced by Israelite leaders during a time of painful changes. The post-exilic leadership, represented by the priestly authors of Genesis 5, faced different problems from those of the earlier leaders. They returned to their former national home as clients of an imperial power. Subservient to the Persian government, these Judeans could not afford to anger their overlords. They needed to affirm a piety that transcended political life. The heroes of the past, represented by the post-deluvian patriarchs, kings, prophets, priests, and judges, all exercised social control. Their tasks had focused on furthering national goals and aims. These leaders no longer served as

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realistic models in the post-exilic period. Seeking for more realistic options, the returning Judean leaders used the myth of Enoch to indicate the possibility of a non­ political hero. Enoch's piety transcends mundane affairs and thus suggests new patterns of religious leadership. Since the returning priests had not yet determined the shape of their communal power, they could afford to use the myth of Enoch as a hint of possibilities derived from a more primal model than Israel's political heroes. Other appearances of the ascension motif in the Hebrew Bible illuminate the Enoch tradition. Prophetic stories about ascension share with the Enoch tales an emphasis on personal piety and alternative leadership. The story of Elijah the prophet, for example, recapitulates the social dimension of the ascension motif. Elijah, a solitary prophet at odds with his society and characterized by an intensely personal piety, eventually despairs of his battle against idolatry and leaves his disciple Elisha behind to continue his work while he ascends to heaven (I Kings 17-19, II Kings 1-2). His story intertwines social and personal themes.

BUBER ON THE ASCENSION MOTIF

The theories of either Jensen or Eliade adequately account for the complex tradition represented by the biblical sources.

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Jensen's view illuminates the myth's function in legitimating a necessary change in leadership. Eliade's perspective shows how changing possibilities for self­ transcendence elicit different means for attaining the same goal: that of advancing beyond the routine of daily experience. Buber's view integrates both perspectives. He begins by dividing myths into two types: the "myth of world preservation" and the "myth of world redemption." The latter emphasizes personal transcendence to the exclusion of social interaction. The former, which he associates with Enoch, combines social legitimation with sensitivity to personal concerns. Both myths, Buber thinks, derive from specific events that people experience, from real relationships between leaders and their followers. The concrete event at the heart of the first type of myth occurred when people associated with a leader whose life did not differ significantly from their own. The hero did not exhibit any apparently supernatural behavior; he lived among them and shared their lives. Nevertheless, he exuded a sense of spirituality. Thus others experienced his life as higher than that of everyday existence. From such a leader people learned that life, without being changed and without alteration in personal behavior, can take on new meaning and purpose. Thus the "myth of world preservation" tells of a hero whose personality transcends the limitations of a specific historical

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setting. The hero shows, by example, that a person can live within the world and still experience transcendence. One need not leave the world or even transform it to enter a reality beyond it. The strange combination of everyday ordinariness of action with an extraordinary spirituality of presence led to the construction of stories such as those about Enoch, Noah, and Elijah. An ascension myth asserts the importance of both transcendence and return to daily living; it refuses to allow its heroes to escape reality by transcending it. The second myth tells of heroes who retreat from the world into themselves; they live lives for which the outside world is irrelevant. As "holy men," they "dominated the inner world" but ignored external reality. They show how to deny everyday life and transcend it. This myth, unlike the ascension myth, grew out of people's experience with a leader obviously different from themselves, whose perception of the world and whose actions radically challenged their own routines. These heroes impressed on their followers the realization that life could be different than they imagined it, that the world itself, and not just they themselves, could be transformed into something different and other.16 Buber notes the danger present in the myth of world redemption. The danger of this myth lies in its temptation to avoid political reality. When ancient Israel had a vibrant national life it could afford to risk myths of redemption, since national

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existence maintained its force. Noah and Enoch, the two biblical heroes who "walk with God," represent a pre-nationalistic model. Buber suggests that the value of the story lies in that characteristic. The myth evolved from meeting with a type of person whose spirituality was liberated from national identity, tied only to a person's private piety and not to that person's public religiousness. This myth, finally recorded in the biblical stories, becomes a new point of departure whenever public religion decays, leaving people faced with "nationless" religion. The myth of Enoch and Noah, of the ascension to heavenly consciousness while living a common and ordinary life, invites those heeding it to a similar piety in the midst of their own lives. The biblical use of the ascension motif both preserves a pre-national religious option and legitimates that option for future generations.17

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENOCH STORIES

Later Jewish writers developed the biblical references to Enoch and added details to that material, making exlicit connections to other ascension heroes.18 Many later authors, however, view both Enoch and Elijah rather negatively, imagining them as exponents of a nontraditional type of religious life. Because Elijah failed in his earthly task, he became an angel eternally dedicated to that task. Rabbinic

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angelology links Elijah and Enoch as leaders who, failing their earthly duties, become immortal as punishment for their failures. Jewish mystics who focused attention on private piety and personal devotion, however, continued to consider Enoch a hero worthy of emulation. Stories circulated in these circles legitimate him as a fully traditional Jew. In this tradition Enoch acts as an observant Jew whose obedience to divine commandments counteracts the disobedience of the primal man. Early texts describe the details of Enoch's ascent and his relationship to angelic beings, while later stories tell of his atonement for the original sin of Adam. In both types of tales Enoch functions positively, as a religious model, as the ideal zaddik, that is to say righteous man, a redemptive hero whose supernal adventures benefit humanity. One variation of this post-biblical view of Enoch occurs in early Christian writings. As the tradition evolved, it attracted diverse and often conflicting religious ideas and views. The texts now extant appear as compendiums of beliefs and hopes that evolved over three centuries. Elements from that tradition entered into and deeply influenced Christianity. The New Testament reflects this tradition in its own "savior myth" that conditions its views of Jesus, its ascription of titles to Jesus, and its portrait of the supernal world of angels and demons. Christians took the motif of the pious leader who ascends to heaven and

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reveals hidden secrets and applied it to other worthies of the past. The texts concerning Enoch specifically appear late in the development of Christian literature. The New Testament rarely refers to him. The letter attributed to Jude mentions Enoch as a prophetic messenger announcing judgment against the godless sinners. The ascension motif itself receives even more attention when applied to other figures from the Hebrew Bible such as the prophet Isaiah. Although some writers claim that parts of the late work The Ascension of Isaiah represent Jewish apocrypha, all agree that its final shape comes from Christian writers. In this version Isaiah, like Enoch, travels to the heavenly spheres and returns with visions and prophecies for future generations.19 Enoch provides human beings with information essential for their salvation. He instructs people on the actions necessary for spiritual and physical survival in a time of trouble. The development of the Enoch tradition enters Christianity as a model of religious life, an alternative to normative Jewish leaders. Several groups in the intertestamental world competed for dominance. Although eventually Christianity and rabbinic Judaism would claim ultimate victory, during the Greco-Roman period rival sectarian leaders struggled for power. The motif of Enoch supplied a justification for leaders who opposed the established power groups of priests and exegetes. In

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opposition to the priests, the Enoch stories provided new rituals, alternative calendars of holidays, and prayers putatively culled from heavenly archetypes. In opposition to authoritative ideologues, the Enoch material introduces new beliefs, interpretations of traditional stories, and concepts derived from Greek philosophy and religion. The motif remains unchanged: a human hero ascends on high to receive a divine commission. This motif suggests the psychological concerns animating writers of the intertestamental period. People felt restless with their religious situation. They felt trapped in a materialistic and socially stratified world. Flight to a cosmic realm of spirit appealed to their desire for transcendence and satisfied their desire to escape the realities of political contention. Those realities, however, demanded that a group follow authorized leaders and that it legitimate its right to exist. The Enoch tradition provided an ancient model that justified a group's claims. The holiness ascribed to Enoch could legitimate opposition to established priestly forms. The specific nature of Enoch's experiences on high, the esoteric teachings ascribed to him, and the graphic descriptions of heavenly behavior given in the Enoch literature reflect the needs of this later period. While the biblical authors who pressed Enoch into service for themselves needed the freedom allowed by a broad, general allusion to Enoch, the competitive nature of the

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intertestamental period required more particular attention to detail. A sectarian group needed to define the rituals, beliefs, and promises that made it more attractive than its alternatives. The sociological necessity of self-presentation altered the telling of the Enoch myth so that it might fit the context of its times. This shaping of the tradition reflects the diversity of religious life addressed no less than the changed political context in which the myth would be understood. When a group such as the rabbis, gained power, they opposed the Enoch tradition and associated charismatic prophecy with punishment. Other groups maintained that charismatic piety might accompany and not contradict normative piety. Still others explored variations of religious living, whether Jewish or Christian. The changing fortunes of Enoch as hero and the diverse guises the legends about him wore underscore the social and political contentiousness of the times. Despite differences in content, then, the Enoch story in the intertestamental period functioned as in the biblical canon. The story legitimated a new type of leader better able to confront new realities.

BUBER ON THE LATER ENOCH STORIES

The sociological and psychological explanations of the ascension myth offered by Jensen and Eliade can interpret the expanded Enoch stories similarly to their

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interpretation of the biblical tales. Buber, however, introduces a new element when he looks at these later views of Enoch. Buber wonders why, if the purpose remains constant, the myth should undergo change. Although a different social group might raise its claim to charismatic leadership, that group could appropriate an earlier myth without changing it. Buber, however, claims that the later stories represent the natural regression of I-It reality as it moves farther and farther from its source of origin. The myths of the intertestamental period seek a more defined hero than the vague intimations of the biblical tradition allow. They "reveal" more about the hero and, Buber thinks, therefore betray their original intention. Buber looks at the biblical material as creatively impressionistic. Genesis merely hints at Enoch's piety; the prophetic canon gives very little information even about Elijah's religious life and certainly seems reticent about such figures as the "suffering servant" in Isaiah, whom Buber claims as an extension of the Enoch tradition. The later versions of the story, he felt, resolved the inherent ambiguity of the biblical tales and thus fell into a literalness that prevents religious growth. The suggestive early myths allow individuals to experiment themselves so that they can duplicate the earlier experience. The later tales fix the story in history: it happened in a certain way to a certain person at a certain time in the past. The unique, unrepeatable act of the hero replaces the

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open invitation to action that Buber finds in the early stories. Buber criticizes Christianity for what he considers a stagnating reduction of the original mythic tradition and a literalism that prevents a transition from I-It to IYou reality. He argues that stories about Jesus, unlike the authentic Enoch story, remove the hero from the "hidden quiver" of God to ascend in an unambiguous personal transfiguration. In this way the story of Jesus replaces the model of transcendence that Buber thinks lies at the heart of the myth.20 Buber's critique of Christianity lacks sympathy for that mythic tradition. The New Testament makes creative use of the Enoch motif, particularly in the Gospel of John. Buber, however, fails to note the presence of the Enoch myth in John 3. Modern scholars remark on the heavenly journey motif apparent when Jesus says to the rabbi, Nicodemus, "Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God ... Only he who has descended from heaven, the Son of man, can ascend into heaven" (John 3:3, 13). Jesus rejects the ideal of a heavenly ascent for all people. By following him and being born anew, Christians no longer need to emulate an Enoch-type hero. Most recently, the New Testament scholar William C. Grese has commented that whereas traditional ascension stories offer manuals for a heavenly journey, "John 3 does not describe how to enter heaven for a revelation but how to obtain the revelation to be found in Jesus," a particularly significant variation on the

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traditional theme.21 As in the earlier Enoch stories, so too here, the theme focuses on alternative forms of leadership. Disciples discover in their relationship with Jesus that they no longer require heavenly charts to show them the way to transcendence. Rebirth depends on discipleship, not magic. Despite Buber's critique of the New Testament, his view of myth illuminates the story in John 3. Jesus says to Nicodemus that the road to the World to Come lies not in a formula or manual of heavenly ascent. Instead, the earthly task must include finding a master whose life transmits the heavenly secrets and whose charisma brings a sense of rebirth. In a similar way, Buber recounts the story of Moshe Teitelbaum, who dreamed that he had been in the paradise of the early rabbinic teachers (Tannaim). There he saw the rabbis studying talmudic tractates and cried, "This can't be paradise." The angels corrected him, "You seem to think that the Tannaim are in paradise, but that's not so: paradise is in the Tannaim."22 Buber himself considers the relationship between teacher and disciple the "quintessence" of hasidic life. He considers the foundation of hasidism to lie in "the life between those who quicken and those who are quickened." The truth of hasidism, as Buber saw it, lay in discipleship rather than intellectual prowess, human ties with a human leader rather than a doctrine to be mastered, revival through life with another rather than revival as return to a philosophical

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proposition.23 From this perspective, both Jensen and Eliade catch only part of the meaning of the myth. The myth does legitimate a new type of leader and does point to self-transcendence. It also, however, as Buber recognizes, points to an event occurring between disciples and leaders. Buber shows that this dynamic relationship remains open to any set of leaders and disciples and need not be locked in the past. Whether the Christian story violates this sense of presentness, as Buber seems to think, may be argued (Buber's prejudices probably enter into his inability to read the Gospel of John sympathetically). Yet, using Buber's own approach does show how the pattern of the Enoch story appearing in the Gospel of John exemplifies the themes of that myth.

THE HASIDIC ENOCH Later Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish mysticism expanded and altered the Enoch tradition. According to this later and more elaborate theory, Enoch became the angel Metatron, who links the heavenly and earthly spheres. Medieval Jewish mystics focused their attention on Metatron and sought to emulate him and, by uniting with his potency, become a living bridge between the cosmic and mundane spheres.24 Late in the Middle Ages another story appeared about another figure called "Enoch the cobbler." Scholars debate the connection between this

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Enoch story and the tradition about the patriarch in Genesis who became an angel. Later hasidism took the tale as exemplary for its followers. The entire teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, and thus of hasidism as a whole, sought to enable people to emulate the wondrous activities of the hero of this tale. Hasidic leaders claimed that they taught how every secular act or word could bind the lower and upper worlds, just as Enoch reportedly did.25 Modern scholars seek to decode this story and decide where it belongs in the long chain of tradition from the biblical Enoch. Gershom Scholem, the foremost modern scholar of Jewish mysticism, in his survey of Jewish mysticism discusses this story in a comment on the Enoch tradition, calling it "scurrilous" and dating its first appearance in the fourteenth century. The tale tells of a poor cobbler whose devotion reaches such a height that as he pursues his trade he effects cosmic changes. Binding the top part of the shoe to the bottom, the cobbler binds the upper worlds to the lower ones. He unifies the spiritual levels of the cosmos with the material ones, overcoming the separation of the holy and the profane through an apparently ordinary act. Scholem never explains his adjective applied to Enoch the cobbler. Certainly Enoch is a "common man." The tale in itself, however, can hardly be called "vulgar" or "evil."26 The very ordinariness of Enoch actually suggests how the main themes of the myth reappear in the hasidic version. This

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version of the story not only regards Enoch as a common cobbler but also lacks any mention of leaders. Enoch undergoes no special training, attaches himself to no specific master, and demonstrates no proficiency in Jewish observances. The tale rather claims that transcendence occurs when people dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to their ordinary pursuits. This new version of tale legitimates the common person, contending that the religious experience of ordinary workers succeeds more effectively than that of the elite leadership. Here the myth serves to democratize charisma. Enoch's very existence threatens the official leadership since a mystic has no need for institutional authority. Mystics, the myth suggests, no longer need leaders not because they oppose social and political authority but because everyday life provides the path to transcendence. This strategy worked well for Jewish mystics. By the Middle Ages, Jewish leadership had divided into three main strands: the legalist, the philosophical, and the mystical. Jewish historians sometimes point to exemplary individuals such as Moses Maimonides, Joseph Karo, and Elijah Gaon of Vilna, who gained prestige and power in more than one of these fields. Even these luminaries, however, rarely influenced more than a select audience: those who respected Maimonides the legalist often rejected his philosophy; Karo's legal work, the Schulchan Arukh, overshadows his mystical aspirations.27

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More often, leaders would find success in a single area. As long as they remained content with that concern, they encountered little resistance. When mystics like the hasidim telling the Enoch story compromised with power, they survived. When they sought to replace it, as the messianic pretender Sabbetai Zevi attempted, they failed. Once again, the Enoch story adapts its theme of charismatic leadership to fit a new situation. The new democratization of the charismatic authority it legitimated suited a new social and political reality demanding compromise for the sake of diversity.

BUBER ON THE HASIDIC ENOCH

Buber claims that his method of interpreting myth reflects the event giving rise to the the myth of the savior hero more adequately than alternative approaches. For Buber, the myth originally reflected on the extraordinary experience of encountering the transcendent within the everyday. At first the myth expressed this experience through describing the life of a hero whose life illustrated the astounding possibility of IYou living. As the story developed, according to Buber's claims, the hero rather than the possibility he illustrated came to dominate. In hasidism, however, the original vision returned, that of the ability "ever again to invest the holy with effect and influence in the realm of the profane." The biblical myth suggests how

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this transformation occurs outside of nationalistic institutions. The hero's sanctification of daily life transcends institutional identity.28 Later variants of the story, by contrast, emphasize institutional forms. Hasidism recaptures the primary insight and shows how "...man influences eternity, and he does this not through special works, but through the intention behind all of his work." The hasidic story, then, more clearly than even the biblical version, preserves the memory of an experience of transcendence occurring in an unmediated relationship between people and their own work. 29 Here, again, Buber points to a broader understanding of the myth than either Jensen or Eliade offers. While they interpret the general pattern of the ascension myth, they cannot explain the development of its variants. Buber's view of myth can explain this development. As a people's experience changes, so too the myths used to preserve that experience change. When surprised by transcendence that occurs in daily life without the need for a leader and yet clearly related to what earlier generations also experienced, people revised the story of Enoch. The transformed myth testifies to a transformed experience of transcendence, one that lacks both great leadership models and extraordinary techniques. Buber does not explicitly point to the social and political environment in which the hasidic myth arose. He seems to think that the myth

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springs from an eternally valid human potential.30 Nevertheless, his theory points beyond his own recognition. A purely sociological or psychological explanation of the hasidic story misses its responsiveness to changing personal possibilities. The myth varies not just because new leadership groups arise or because of a continuing need for self-transcendence. The myth varies because people live differently and see different options for themselves in different historical settings. Buber's interpretive stance enables him to grasp this point clearly.

THE LIMITATIONS OF BUBER'S VIEW

This positive value of Buber's interpretation, however, must be balanced against Buber's misreading of certain features of the hasidic myth. While Gershom Scholem's criticism seems strange and extreme, that of other scholars shows how Buber's argument lacks cogency. Perhaps his opposition comes from a conviction, shared with another student of hasidism and Jewish mysticism, Louis Jacobs, that the message of the story advocates a mystical experience "totally different from Buber's I-Thou relationship." 31 This judgment may be historically accurate in its relationship to the original Enoch stories. Modern research in the Enoch tradition, of which the cobbler story may be the latest version, suggests that he became the model of that unitive

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mystical immersion in the divinity that Buber opposed. Enoch was the ideal mystic because by becoming one with the divine potencies he took on their magical powers and capabilities. Enoch the cobbler acts as a secret mystic, a hidden righteous man, who as he sews the upper leather of shoes to the soles unites heaven and earth. Perhaps Buber misunderstands this aspect of the story because he envisions future religious life as communal rather than privatistic. He opposes "mystic" self­ absorption. The social and cultural setting of Jewish mysticism, however, could have cautioned him against importing a modern meaning to earlier texts. As a theorist of myth, he points to the modern meaning of the tale as a development but not necessarily a recapitulation of the hasidic version of the Enoch story. That he did not merely shows his own limitations as an exponent of his theory, not the failure of the theory as a whole. Buber's study of the Enoch myth helps theorists of myth understand the evolution of a mythic tradition.

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NOTES 1.

Martin Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), pp. 95, 99, 103.

2.

See Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Later Years. 19451964 (New York: Dutton, 1981), p. 228.

3.

This problem serves as the focal point for Robert A. Segal's article "In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth." Annals of Scholarship 1:1 (1980): 3-49.

4.

See Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Martin Buber's Reception among Jews," Modern Judaism 6:2 (1986), p. 120.

5.

Haim Gordon, "Method of Clarifying Buber's I-Thou Relationship," Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (1976): 71-83; compare Walter Kaufmann's "Prologue," in Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. and intro. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's, 1970), pp. 9-48, and Robert E. Wood, Martin Buber's Ontology: An Analysis of I and Thou. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969).

6.

Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1952), pp. 4-6.

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7.

Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, eds. and trans. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1952), pp. 17, 40, 98ff., 157, 386-88.

8.

Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon, 1963), pp. 103, 274.

9.

See the presentation of the Enoch material given by Moshe Idel, "Enoch— that is Metatron," in his Ancient Jewish Mysticism, (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1987), pp. 151-70, especially pp. 159-61.

10. See Adolf E. Jensen, Myth and Cult Among Primitive Peoples, trans. Marianna Tax Choldin and Wolfgang Weissleder (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 224-25. 11. See Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), pp. 99-122. 12. See Ignac Goldziher, Mythology Among the Hebrews and its Historical Development, trans. Russell Maretineau (New York: Cooper Square, 1967), pp. 127-29, and Umberto Cassutto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: From Adam to Noah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961), pp. 229 and 281-84. On the theory of a solar deity and its place in mythology see Richard M. Dorson, "The Eclipse of Solar

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Mythology,11 in Thomas A. Sebeok, ed., Myth: A Symposium (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 25-63. 13. See Hermann Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History, trans. W.H.Carruth (New York: Schocken, 1964), pp. 95ff., and idem., Genesis, seventh ed. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1966), pp. 135-37. 14. Compare Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. and abridged Moshe Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 77, 244, 316 and idem., Toldot Haemunah HaYisraelit [Hebrew], vol. I (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1937), pp. 188, 211, 456. Kaufmann claims that this transformation shows how biblical authors neutralized the mythical aspects of the sources they used. 15. See the discussion of the Yahwist and Priestly writer and the bibliographies given in Walter Brueggemann and Hans Walter Wolff, The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975). Common usage refers to modern times as A.D. and to ancient times as B.C. Those terms, however, are theological ones. When Christians speak of A.D., In the Year of Our Lord, or of B.C., Before the Christ, they are asserting that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah, and that with his advent the world was changed. This book uses a more neutral set of terms: "bee", before

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16. Buber, On Judaism, pp. 106-7. 17. Martin Buber, On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, (New York: Schocken, 1968), p. 32. 18. See Idel, "Enoch— that is Metatron," pp. 151-59; compare the sources he cites with intertestamental writings such as Wisdom of Solomon 4:10-11 and Ecclesiasticus 44:16; see the discussions in R.H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), pp. 163-87, 425-30. On the Enoch stories generally from their earliest forms through the later medieval Jewish and Christian materials see Jozef T. Milik, "Introduction," in J. T. Milik, ed. with the collaboration of Matthew Black, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 3135. 19. See H.H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (New York: Association Press, 1964), pp. 123-26; see also his treatment of the Enoch myth (which he calls "an ancient one"), pp. 57-64 and 93-99. Buber's treatment of the Christian elements in the story and his rejection of them are studied by Max

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Brod in his "Judaism and Christianity in the Work of Martin Buber," in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), pp. 319-40; see especially p. 320. 20. See Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith, trans. Norman P. Goldhawk (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), p. 112, and his The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies (New York: Macmillan, 1949), p. 203. 21. William C. Grese, "Unless One is Born Again: The Use of a Heavenly Journey in John 3," Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988), pp. 677-93. 22. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), pp. 189-90. 23. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 8. 24. See the discussion and references in Milik, pp. 125-35. Milik disputes the view of Gershom Scholem (see note 26) that emphasizes the identity of Metatron and Enoch; compare the entire study in Idel, "Enoch— that is Metatron." 25. Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer cites this comment in the introduction to her Quietistic Elements in 18th Century

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BUBER ON MYTH Hasidic Thought [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1968), p. 12.

26. Scholem discusses the Enoch story and its relationship to the Metatron legend in his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), pp. 40-43, 67-70; a footnote on pp. 365-66 calls the cobbler story "scurrilous." Perhaps he comes to this conclusion out of opposition to Buber. In another context, Scholem suggests the connection between the patriarch Enoch and the cobbler story and remarks that "Buber draws from this tale an inference diametrically opposed to that drawn by the sources in which it is quoted." On The Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 132. Some of his other discussions of Enoch do not introduce the hasidic material; see his Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), pp. 377-88. 27. The pioneering study of R.J.Zevi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962) offers a wideranging study of these issues, including an analysis not only of sixteenthcentury legalism and mysticism but also of the "charisma" of Elijah Gaon of Vilna in the eighteenth-century. 28. Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), p. 87.

BUBER ON MYTH 29. Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), pp. 181-85. 30. Ibid., pp. 151, 214-15. 31. Louis Jacobs, "Aspects of Scholem's Study of Hasidism," Modern Judaism 5:1, pp. 96-98.

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Chapter 3

Buber and the Bible

MYTH AND BIBLICAL STUDIES

Nahum Glatzer, presenting several of Buber's studies on the Hebrew Bible, declares that "The central theme in Buber's biblical research concerns the concept of the kingdom of God, the origin of the institution of kingship in ancient Israel, and the inception of the idea of the Messianic kingdom."l Certainly Buber takes biblical politics seriously. Buber exalts the biblical criteria for true leadership, the Bible's contention that only YHVH should rule, and the messianic ideal of a perfected society as valuable teachings for modern times. Both biblical myth and biblical politics testify to a single message, a message he finds within the messianic vision that he calls a "mythicization" of "actualhistorical" events.2 This view of biblical politics and messianism separates Buber's exegesis from that of other biblical critics. Both Buber 89

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and Yehezkel Kaufmann, for example, recognize fantastic elements in the description of the End of Days found in Isaiah 2. Kaufmann emphasizes the theological meaning, the political significance, but not the mythical aspects of the description: the hero does not represent "a redeeming Messiah" but rather "the culmination of God's grace to Israel." The vision presents the "abstract ideal" of a universal humanity "expressed in the vision of the temple mount."3 Buber, like Kaufmann, reads the passage as a statement of ideal politics: it offers a "theopolitical realism" that establishes "the divine order of human community" through "human forces and human responsibility." Nevertheless, Buber also remarks that the chapter provides a "mythical garb" for these ideas. The I-You realization of true community, for Buber, takes on I-It tangibility in myth. The Messianic king Isaiah describes "is the man in whom the likeness has unfolded" — the likeness of God accessible to every person. Garbing that likeness in the mythical dress of a great king, Buber suggests, preserves the experiential insight that such political leadership may illustrate a generally human potential.4 Buber's approach to the Bible combines sensitivity to its political message with an awareness of its mythical content. Laurence Silberstein's study on Buber's social thought notes a "predilection for myth" that "departed from the norms of modern Jewish thought and scholarship," that

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led many biblical scholars to question Buber's thinking.5 Buber's interests often coincide with those of contemporary biblical scholars. James Muilenburg, however, correctly notes the disparity. Buber may accept the agenda of biblical criticism. He uses techniques and methods very different from those normally employed.6 Buber's distinctiveness as a biblical scholar comes in no small measure from his willingness to interpret a biblical text as myth. The rationalist outlook of modern biblical scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries banished myth from true religion. Julius Wellhausen, whose division of the Pentateuch into various documentary sources remains the point of departure even for contemporary biblical scholarship, contrasted the stories in Genesis to "myth." Wellhausen argued that ancient Israel's abolition of myth marked the advancement of biblical culture beyond the lower stage of religious evolution found in polytheism. Nevertheless, as a sensitive interpreter of literature, he lamented the inevitable diminution of power resulting from the change. He expressed his ambivalence by remarking that "The pale colour which generally marks the productions of the earliest reflection about nature, when they are not mythical theories, is characteristic of Gen. 1 also."7 This judgment extends biblical authors a compliment— they have excised myth— while denying them creative artistry— they offer only pale reflections

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about nature. This double sensitivity characterizes the discussion of biblical myth throughout modern scholarship. Wellhausen's double standard echoes through modern studies of myth and the Hebrew Bible that praise the Bible for its rationalism and lament its loss of mythic lyricism. Some authors emphasize the positive aspects in the rejection of myth by claiming that biblical Israel substituted history for myth. This judgment reflects an evolutionary view of human reflection on the past. R. G. Collingwood, for example, claims that "History as it exists today ... has come into existence in the last four thousand years" and seeks to elucidate its stages and development.8 According to this evolutionary paradigm, humanity advances through several "quasi-historical" theories to historiography as such and then to philosophies of history. From a naive and confused view of the past, people evolve a universalist theory of events and their meaning. Biblical Israel, according to several modern theories, moved humanity closer to a truly historical view of reality.9 Rather than offer "pale" substitutes for myth, these thinkers contend, biblical writers elevated earlier myths by historicizing them. Archeological evidence apparently supports this claim since biblical narratives differ from the stories told in other ancient Near Eastern documents. The Bible posits a single deity who controls history and nature. That supposition leads biblical writers to

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construct a coherent theory of history and a scientific approach to cause and effect. Texts from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan reveal a contrasting cosmic vision emphasizing chaos. Conflicting and independent forces compete for control of the world. These forces, personified as divine beings, struggle among themselves. Human beings, at the mercy of these unpredictable deities, cannot construct a science that requires reliable laws and repeatable experiments. They cannot conceive a philosophy of history since events depend upon the whim of gods whose incessant competition precludes a constant balance of power or structure of meaning. G. Ernest Wright, respected as both a theologian and an archeologist, argued this case in 1950. Reviewing the comparative data, he insists upon the absence of "myth" from the Hebrew Bible. While admitting that "modern theologians revive the term 'myth'" in explaining the Bible, he contends that such usage is derivative and "not primary or original." Israel's literature "suddenly appears in history, breaking radically with the mythopoeic approach to reality."10 The Hebrew Bible alters the traditional mythology of ancient Near Eastern literature and introduces a theological innovation. By substituting history for myth, Wright suggests, Israelite thinkers advanced the cause of rationality. Since events followed predictable causes, not the whims of changeable gods, humanity could make longrange plans without fear. That rational predictability prepares the way for science:

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the process of creating general principles of causation based on practical experimentation. This theory seems to posit two ways of viewing the world: the mythic and the historical. In effect, however, it assumes three separate, if related, world views: science, myth, and history.11 Myth, according to this thesis, offers primitive explanations of reality, explanations disguised as stories. Myth portrays a world built out of imagination, based on an inaccurate science that provides a sense of environmental control to societies lacking technical skills. Science, by contrast, offers explicit explanations of the world, experimenting with the natural world to produce an accurate and rational assessment of cause and effect, enabling a more reliable means of controlling the world. Both myth and science, according to this view, offer explanations both of specific phenomena and of the general principles behind events. The explanations each provides are exhaustive and mutually exclusive. One myth, for example, may explain how the worm gained power over the tooth, thereby causing toothaches. Primitive medicine might use that myth to cure people suffering from tooth decay. Science may explain tooth decay, however, by suggesting alternative causes, each requiring its own therapy. Some myths do more than explain the origins of one or another fact of human life; some, rather poetically, express a

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theory of life generally: events reflect the whims of supernatural beings who express their conflicts, inclinations, and responses to human actions through effects on the world. Scientists also sometimes articulate general theories that explain the operations of the world, whether a theory of gravity, light, or relativity. Myth narrates a story about origins, describing the initial occurrence of an event as if it brought a fact into being and established it forever. Science postulates certain reliable rules or "laws" that govern how things occur in the world. Myth and science, then, both seek to discover enduring and predictable causes active in the past, present, and future; in contrast a third approach, that of history, focuses on unique and nonrecurring events. What happened in the past need not foreshadow what will occur in the present or the future. According to this typology, a historical approach seeks to "understand" the past rather than to explain why it occurred, let alone to predict events. Those who hold this view argue that the Hebrew Bible represents a significant break with both earlier thought and modern science by introducing a sense of history.

THE TRANSITION TO HISTORY

With this distinction among science, myth, and history in mind, many scholars contend that biblical thought marks an advance in the history of human rationality.

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Yehezkel Kaufmann, clearly agreeing with Wright, argues for such a positive view of the biblical innovation.12 Israel's folk genius, he suggests, recognized only one deity. This monotheistic insight provided the foundation of modern science. Kaufmann points to the biblical creation stories as an example of how, despite "vestiges" of ancient myths, the instinctive folk response of ancient Israel removed all traces of a "demonic realm" that might lead to a chaotic view of the world. Events do not occur because of the arbitrary and unpredictable whims of conflicting deities. Instead, history flows from the single will of the one creating deity. This one God stands behind joy and pain, good and bad fortune. The stories picture singular events occurring in the past that neither explain the world nor offer people a means of controlling it but rather emphasize actions taken by human beings. Israel's God, the sole, unique ruler of the universe, banishes mythology. Kaufmann admits that the Bible retains vestiges of an earlier polytheistic mythology. Images taken from pagan lore reappear, transformed, in the biblical tales. The authors of these stories inherited mythic forms, Kaufmann suggests, but filled them with a new content. The older tales told of conflict among the gods, of demonic forces throughout the world, of a nonhistorical pattern of causation. The Bible radically changes this approach by its monotheistic revolution. Based on this

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monotheistic content, biblical narratives create a historical and non-mythic tradition. While in form Israel's folk religion might borrow from earlier prototypes, in content its monotheistic bias demanded the rejection of mythology. The "isolated traces of pagan mythology" have lost their force in the biblical stories. The stories in fact emphasize a single theme far closer to science than to myth: God alone has fixed the laws of heaven and earth, the world and all that is therein.13 Kaufmann's views influence many scholars today. These scholars interpret the biblical tales as a historicizing of myth. Whereas myth tells of polytheistic deities who continue the original acts of creation and conflict again and again in eternal struggle, the Bible tells of a single divinity whose unique creative act initiates a progressive history that continues to unfold in accordance with an original plan. Since the stories trace a historical development rather than a static "explanation," they represent a transition from mythology to the scientific mode of interacting with the world. The concept of a "divine plan" explains the order and predictability of the world. On the basis of that theory human beings can analyze the world, experiment with data, and draw reliable conclusions from their work. Jewish scholars who accept Kaufmann's lead in emphasizing the absence of biblical myth sometimes give grudging acknowledgment to the critical apparatus associated with

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Wellhausen, usually, however, only after modi fying it.14 While Kaufmann's approach emphasizes the rejection of myth for history as the foundation for scientific thought, other scholars disagree. The influential scholar of ancient Near Eastern culture Henri Frankfort, for example, suggests that biblical thinking moves directly from ancient myth to historical myth without developing a scientific view of the world, a view which he claims comes much later with Greek thought. The biblical perspective, denying myth but not yet inculcating science, leads, in his view, to a tragic condition. Myth, he contends, inspired ancient Near Eastern religions to discover magical ways of manipulating the divine forces shaping reality; Israel submitted to the indecipherable whims of its deity. That one God takes full responsibility for the diverse and changing elements of the world, leaving no room for chance or accident. Natural and human events alike manifest a patterned history, a determined program that needs decoding. Biblical thinkers, heir to this historical perspective, set about interpreting the meaning of their deeds as isolated facts in a grandiose scheme. Narrowing their focus to such an investigation of history, Israelites lost the tie with nature that mythology had provided. Monotheism, with its shift of emphasis from the interaction of humanity with nature to an ethical and historical introspection alienated humanity as a singular creation.

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Frankfort laments this replacement of ancient mythology by the exaltation of history. Ancient Near Eastern religion had taught its adherents to flow with the natural tides of the world. Rather than imposing a single pattern on life's diversity, polytheism explained and justified that plurality. Israel's God of the covenant, Yahweh, removed this justification of diversity and thereby undermined what Frankfort called "the greatest good ancient Near Eastern religion could bestow— the harmonious integration of man's life with the life of nature." By focusing on history, on a series of nonrepeatable events, Israel's covenantal thought left its believers unable to cope with the cycle of nature on which they depended for life. The resulting alienation from agriculture created an enduring sense of human unhappiness and tragedy.15 In opposition to Kaufmann, Frankfort claims that this monotheism prevented the development of science. Frankfort describes the transition from paganism to biblical thought as a transformation in world view, a conversion of consciousness. In his view, the mythic consciousness arises from an animistic view of reality. The primitive human being fills the world with personality. Unable to conceive of an impersonal, scientific, or philosophical reality, pre-scientific thought imputes anthropomorphic qualities to all existence. Myth arises when people

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experience reality as composed of others who address them as a "Thou." He suggests that primitive peoples live expectantly, waiting for reality to reveal itself in a "playful fantasy" of a "Thou" that also contains an authoritative power. Frankfort notes that "Out of the repeated experience of the 'I-Thou' relationship a fairly consistent personalistic view may develop." These personalistic views characterize myth in the ancient Near East. The transition from myth to science shatters this I-Thou understanding of reality. Israel's transformation of myth into history, however, avoided that consequence. The Bible retains a personalistic view of the world— a mythic mentality, as it were— without the mythic philosophy that usually accompanied it. Israel created an alternative myth, that of "the Will of God." While retaining the "I-Thou" experience, the Bible reduced all Thou's to a single personality.16 This transformation undermined ancient myth without permitting the rise of science and inspired a pessimistic view of human life.17

DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE BIBLE

Between the strong negation of myth advanced by the rationalists and the strong affirmation of myth made by their opponents lies a middle ground. The Bible contains myth, but the potency of its myths lies in the ideas they convey, not in their mythic

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 101 form. Myth, according to this view, expresses philosophical ideas in a primitive and elementary way. The authors of the Bible used that primitive language because they addressed a primitive audience. More sophisticated readers of the Bible, however, need a more sophisticated language. The biblical message must be decoded from its mythic form and reexpressed philosophically. Scholars following this approach seek techniques by which to translate biblical mythic images into a more modern medium of communication. One technique, championed by Rudolf Bultmann, explains the existential meaning in biblical myths. Myth, understood as a genre for transmitting ideas and claims about human existence, tells stories not to transmit literal descriptions but to evoke a particular world view. Modern readers can read apparently impossible stories and discover contemporary meaning in them. Tales about miracles, about supernatural events, about divine beings, actually point to a view of reality, an existential interpretation of life. Mythical references need not be taken as literal descriptions of natural phenomena. Instead, they convey signs and hints, indications of abstract ideas. Decoded in this way, biblical myths that correspond with myths in nonbiblical cultures point to a shared world view; the changes introduced by biblical writers into traditional myths point to a changed view of reality. This approach to myth, called demythologization, advocates a modern stance to the Bible. It does not pretend that the

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biblical authors themselves demythologized the material they inherited from the past. It merely suggests that they used mythic expression as a natural part of their world view. Biblical writers did not consciously translate ideas into stories. The stories, however, do contain ideas within them. Therefore, modern readers can demythologize the stories and learn thereby how the Bible differs from the other mythic works. The Roman Catholic biblical scholar John L. McKenzie, for example, argues that the Bible is neither science and philosophy nor theology. It must be looked at as a type of "poetic embellishment" that neither substitutes for religion nor is identical to i t . Myth serves neither as history nor as science but as a means of enunciating a response to the world. The modern biblical critic should translate the mythic language into discursive language about that response.18 This approach to the Bible accepts the presence of myth but refuses to emphasize myth as an end in itself. Myth has value only when it points beyond itself to general philosophical truths about existence. The dialogue between those who affirm the value of myth and those who deny it even a presence in the Bible often turns into polemic. A few of the older scholars anticipated this new affirmation of myth, among them Buber. Studying Buber's biblical investigations requires taking the intense polarization of Jewish approaches to the Bible as their backdrop.

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Buber participated as an active partner in the debates and discussions that divided the critics and the advocates of myth as an element in biblical thinking. Like other scholars, Buber acknowledged the change monotheism created in Israelite thinking. Unlike them, he did not claim that monotheism necessitates a relinquishing of myth. Buber's early lectures on Judaism suggest two types of monotheism: one which abolishes myth and one which affirms it. The tension between these two types, he contends, tells the story of Judaism: "The history of the development of Jewish religion is really the history of the struggles between the natural structure of a mythical-monotheistic folk-religion and the intellectual structure of a rationalmonotheistic rabbinic religion."19 Buber refuses to banish myth from the Bible. While at times, Buber admits, the Bible does historicize myth, on other occasions it presents "a mythisation of history." Buber strenuously opposes those who wish to strip biblical religion of myth because such denuding would reduce religion irreparably. Monotheism creates its own myths, different but no less powerful than the myths of polytheism because "only an abstract theological monotheism can do without myth." A living religion, one that looks to life, not merely to abstract theology, needs specific forms by which it realizes its abstract ideas. It needs myth

104 BUBER AND THE BIBLE as a sturdy and solid vessel for a religion of memory "in which its central events can be kept safe and lastingly remembered and incorporated."20 Myth affirms monotheism insofar as it serves memory honestly rather than seeking to replace the event to which it points. When myth acts as a servant to memory, it prepares the way for present dialogue. It opens a path through the past into the present and future so that what once became an opportunity for meeting can become so again. Myth acts in the present because it offers a valuable and irreplaceable testimony to an event in the past. Buber embraces the Bible's historicization of story even as he affirms myth. He contrasts "history" to "apocalypticism" rather than to "myth." The prophetic faith, Buber feels, emphasized history because within it human beings learned their responsibility. Not monotheism but ethics lies at the heart of the Bible's revolutionary view. History takes on importance because human deeds change the world; people supply an element of surprise, of spontaneity to creation. Buber lauds the prophetic insight that legitimates history. He considers it an expression of the "highest strength and fruitfulness." Prophecy, in this spirit, emphasizes moral freedom as characteristic of "God's partner in the dialogue of history." The apocalyptic spirit, unlike prophecy, considers God independent of all creation, requiring no creature with whom to enter

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 105 into dialogue. What replaces history during the "decadence" of Eastern culture and religion is an unchangeable determinism. Buber sees the struggle between Israel and its neighbors not as one between a culture at odds with nature and those at home with it but as one between a culture that accepts the responsibility of ethical living and cultures that fatalistically deny the value of moral decision making. Finally, Buber considers this distinction crucial for modern as well as ancient cultures. Every human society must choose between history and apocalypticism, and Buber considers those societies which choose history "in league with the prophets."21 Buber's approach combines an affirmation of myth with an affirmation of history. While many biblical scholars think such a double affirmation impossible, Buber considers it inevitable. Myth does not mean the absence of history but rather a vivid memory of it; history does not imply a transcendence of myth but rather a recognition of the choice every person must make in the present. Buber characterizes the theme of the Bible as a historical one: "the encounter between a group of people and the Lord of the world in the course of history." The narrative evoking that history, however, takes the form of myth. Biblical myth, in all its variations, reinforces history rather than apocalypticism or a retreat to fatalism.22 Buber opposes interpreters who call for a "demythologization of the Bible" and thereby reduce the historical and prophetic stories

106 BUBER AND THE BIBLE of the Bible to existential propositions. He stands against demythologization, which he calls "the postulate of the hour" because "myth is not the subsequent clothing of a truth of faith; it is the unarbitrary testimony of the image-making vision and the image-making memory, and the conceptual cannot be refined out of it."23 Myth when joined with history transcends mere existentialist propositions. While some critics claim that Buber accepts Bultmann's conclusions too uncritically, in fact Buber opposes reductionism, even that which decodes myth as existential truth.24 Benjamin Uffenheimer, an Israeli biblical scholar who employs many of Buber's techniques to subjects that Buber himself did not analyze, offers an insight into Buber's relationship to Bultmann. He suggests that Buber opposes Bultmann for transposing myth into something other than itself. Buber refuses to refashion myth into an abstract claim or even into a historical claim. Myth remains a document— a monument to an event. The religious legitimacy of the myth lies in the honesty of its representation, in its truthful documentation of the original meeting. Biblical myth does not need translation into another language. The commentator need only point to the function mythic language plays so that readers may respond to the myth's address. According to Buber, the Bible tells stories neither to give a historical explanation of events nor to provide a

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 107 mythic vision of life. Neither history nor myth truly describes the biblical intent. Rather, the Bible serves a single purpose: it publishes a "Gospel," a "good news." Whether using historical narrative, mythic poetry, or wisdom sayings, the Bible transmits a single message. That message consists neither of a mythic or scientific explanation of cause and effect nor of a series of historical events. Instead, it proclaims a continuing human opportunity: human beings stand in equality before the single God, are called upon to respond to that God as a commanding "Thou," and shape their lives as they answer the summons placed upon them.25 This language resembles Henri Frankfort's description of myth as an expression of a primitive, animistic world view. Actually, it differs from Frankfort by refusing to reduce myth to a function of primitive thinking. Buber's "I-Thou" expresses a generally human possibility rather than pre-modern or pre-scientific thinking. The biblical narrative has contemporary relevance because of its testimony to "I-Thou" relationships. As a witness to that possibility, it advances beyond either science or myth. For Buber, the choice between a "historical" form and a "mythic" one makes little sense. Myth grows out of history. Historical events once retold become myth. Buber rejects a dichotomy between the mythic approach and the historical. Instead, he maintains that biblical myth arises from IThou meetings that occurred in actual history. The mythic form preserves a memory

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of those meetings with an immediacy that can stimulate a readiness to repeat them in the present. The stories reported in the Bible reflect upon events in human lives retold so as to convey an intangible meeting rather than the literal details of external happenings. Buber uses an admittedly subjective method by which to trace back the evidence of that meeting through historical reports, through prophetic utterances, through legends, and through myth. Because of his subjective approach, Buber often wins respect but not acceptance for his theories.26

PAGANISM AND MONOTHEISM Buber's distinctive interpretation of Jewish mythology appears in his contrast between Hebraic and pagan views of the divine. Like other thinkers, Buber distinguishes between Hebraic and pagan mythology. Pagan myths are wrong not because they are myths but because they misconstrue reality about the meeting with God and about the creatures encountered. Where pagan myths assume that God, humanity, and creation are all part of one continuous reality, biblical myth maintains the distinctions among the individual participants in the world. A meeting can occur only when God, humanity, and the natural creatures interact as integral and self-authenticated individuals. By dissolving the differences between the

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 109 spheres of existence, paganism prevents true meeting. Biblical myth, because it is monotheistic, not because it is myth, captures the true nature of reality. Pagan myth, because it is pagan, not because it is myth, offers false testimony about reality. The nature of Israel's God precludes the type of myth found in pagan religion. Pagan religion, Buber, like Frankfort, suggests, seeks to master nature through appeal to the gods. Rather than address the divine as a "You," pagan religion asserts magical control over it. Since "the scriptural God is essentially different from the gods of other national myths," the biblical myth points to a different and more humanistic reality.27 Buber recognizes the truth of myth as a reflection of the duality of IThou and I-It ways of living in the world. Buber evaluates myth by determining its accuracy as a reflection of the two ways of being in the world. Biblical myth, on this reading, retains a sense of the two personalities involved in I-You meeting. Where pagan myth dissolves this duality into a false unity, biblical myth emphasizes the integrity of every participant. Buber often characterizes this aspect of Jewish myth by using an expression common among nineteenthand early twentieth-century apologists for Judaism: ethical monotheism. While other Jewish theologians as well as Buber consider this concept the key to Jewish religion, Buber understands it in a special way. He thinks of ethical monotheism as the entire pattern of Israelite living, not merely as an intellectual or moral idea. Biblical

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myth reflects ethical monotheism when it transmits a sense of the obligation to discover life as an organic whole through human meeting. When people discover their responsibility toward the world as a field of other selves, they respond, Buber claims, by creating the myths of ethical monotheism.28 Those who seek to evade that reality, however, create myths to reinforce their own illusions. The Bible, while sharing a set of mythological themes with ancient Egyptian and ancient Mesopotamian literature, employs those themes differently. In Egypt, for example, myth transmitted secret knowledge. Those initiated into the myths of Ptah at Memphis, of Amon in Thebes, or Aton at Heliopolois received a special teaching that guaranteed them salvation. They achieved a gnosis of hidden truth. In contrast, Babylonian myth was oriented toward cultic practices rather than salvation. Its diviner priests instructed people in daily affairs and used magic to cure toothaches, to plan military campaigns, and to predict the future. Myths, in Babylonia, provided a means of attaining magic, rather than salvation. Buber contrasts both the gnosis of Egypt and the magic of Babylonia to Israel's "good news." That news, he claims, focuses on the reality of the meeting between the divine and the human, on the equality and immediacy of that relationship, and of the genuine encounter between an "I" and a "Thou." Buber takes his task to be that of

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 111 reaffirming the biblical message in contrast to that of either the gnostic secrets of Egypt or the magical practices of Babylonia.29 Buber, then, clearly thought of his analysis of myth as a discussion of accurate or inaccurate mythic sources. He interpreted the Bible as a compendium of true myth. The modern scholar may well wonder at Buber's confidence. He himself faced an objection to his subjectivism. Nevertheless, his approach offers an insightful way of reading the Bible, even if his truth claims about biblical myth seem unsubstantiated by clear evidence. Even his exaltation of the Bible in relationship to other cultures can be read less as an evaluative type of exegesis than as a way of reading the text more carefully. Buber illuminates the Book of Job, for example, by examining its relationship to other ancient Near Eastern mythical tradition.

MYTH IN THE BOOK OF JOB

Buber's approach differs from those who interpret biblical religion as an advance from a primitive, mythic world view to a modern, scientific stance. This view enables him to interpret strange tales that seem to contradict the rationalistic perspective. The Book of Job, for example, teems with mythical allusions and images. Biblical scholars struggle to understand this work. Some affirm the mythical roots of the tale, yet deny their crucial

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importance. Others consider the book a vestige of pagan traditions. Buber's analysis avoids both extremes by interpreting the story as a response by post-exilic Jews to their new encounter with the deity.30 The Book of Job develops in four stages. The first stage tells of God's discussion with his angelic court, numbering among them the Satan, or the "adversary." In the course of conversation with this angel, God wagers that "his" servant Job cannot be dissuaded from his piety no matter what may occur to him. God and Satan agree to test whether any fortuitous accident can unsettle Job's conviction of divine justice. Several disasters occur to Job, some of them the work of natural forces without apparent rationale (lightning descends to slaughter his children) and some apparently the decision of human beings following their own inclinations (bandits raid his herds). The author thereby implies that "unthinking" nature and "free" human beings both act according to a power that compels them. Job never complains about this treatment. The second stage of the story introduces conflict and a different philosophical stance. Job engages three friends in dialogue. Job claims that God should act justly and that the actions taken against him are unjust. The friends defend God's justice and suggest that Job must have merited the suffering he has endured. In the third stage, God confronts Job from out of a whirlwind. God overwhelms Job with a

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 113 display of creative force and power so that Job admits his mortality and insignificance. The book ends with an epilogue. God justifies Job and condemns his friends. Job has "spoken truly" about the divine while the friends have not. Only through Job's prophetic intercession for the friends can they win God's forgiveness. Job fulfills his duty and prays successfully for his friends. Satan never reappears, and God restores Job to his former prosperity. Most biblical scholars admit that the author of Job drew on ancient myths or legends.31 They suggest that the book's archaic language and dense images reflect the influence of pagan religion on Hebrew thinking. The theme, symbols, and content of the book have much in common with ancient Near Eastern literature. Some scholars, however, minimize the importance of these correspondences. Robert Gordis, for example, recognizes that the author of the book uses mythical allusions but claims that "he is not interested in imaginary creatures from the dim mythological past— he is concerned with the actual present, with the vast universe as it is governed by its maker." Gordis opposes those scholars who interpret the story as a mythic one. He suggests that they fail "to distinguish between mythological allusions and religious beliefs."32 For him, the book, then, far from representing myth, replaces it with a historical perspective. Buber's concern for the book as "myth," however, moves beyond recognition of

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mythical allusions or an original ancient Near Eastern source that the author borrowed. When seeking the lived experience reflected in the story, Buber notes four theological strands. The prologue and epilogue of the book seem expressions of determinism. A human being, confronting the inevitability of fate, affirms fate as an Other, as a You. The dialogue between Job and his friends reflects two kinds of "mismeetings" in the world: that among human beings and that between humanity and the deity. The portrayal of God in the whirlwind points to a fourth alternative: an I-You relationship that overwhelms but does not destroy the human partner and thereby confirms people in their significance. Buber considers the portrayal of these four kinds of meeting as accurate assessments of human experience. Thus he considers the story to "bear the stamp of an intractable directness— the stamp of a first expression."33 Job as myth arose to characterize an event that shook its teller by its unexpectedness and newness; the author expressed this experience by placing the new meeting within the context of older, more traditional ones. The author of the story could convey the significance of an encounter with the You of God only by relating a strange and perplexing tale that encompassed all alternative theories. Buber discerns four experiences of human meeting with the deity. According to him, the prologue (and one should also assume the epilogue) portrays a capricious divine tyrant: "a small mythological idol." This

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 115 God acts without regard for any other being and plays games with creation. The dialogue offers two views of deity. On the one hand the friends dogmatically affirm cause and effect: the deity must follow the rigid laws of scientific causation applied to the sphere of morality. God must submit to the inexorable logic of the human consciousness. On the other hand Job argues that while God acts for a purpose, the divine actions testify to injustice. God apparently "contradicts His own revelation" by promising rational purpose but acting irrationally, and this contradiction leaves Job irreconcilably confused. Neither the world nor God seems to make sense. The author has suggested three ways people interact with the divine: they may see divine actions as irrational forces intersecting their lives without purpose or meaning; they may impose a human morality on divine actions without regard for the actual facts in any specific case; or they may try to affirm both experiences— defending the divine as purposeful and moral, but recognizing that divine actions are often irrational and immoral. The third alternative, Job's predicament, requires some resolution. The God who confronts Job from the whirlwind provides that resolution in a fourth alternative. Although appearing in the same story, "this God, Who answers from the tempest, is different from the God of the Prologue."34 As Buber understands this story, it reflects a person's surprised and shocked response to an amazing meeting. This person experiences God as creator and

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recognizes all the terror and horror of natural life. This person also experiences God in revelation, as the moral teacher who demands righteousness. Caught in the Joban conflict, the person then experiences a third reality: God affirms the confused and intellectually crippled human being as a worthy person. While the conflict between God as creator and God as moral teacher remains, the person also experiences God as one who reassures, who confirms even the confused person as important and significant. Job learns that God takes note of him, even if he cannot understand why God does so or how to reconcile his experiences of God. According to Buber, the myth of Job rejects both pagan gnosticism, which thinks human beings can know the secrets of the divine and pagan magic, which thinks human beings can compel the divine. The experience of the prologue represents the former, that of the dialogue reflects the latter. Job's experience in the whirlwind reflects the truer myths of Hebrew thought: God is known neither intellectually nor magically, but only though I-You meeting.35 The meeting with God confirms human ignorance of the divine and human inability to predict or control divine acts, but it also affirms the value of being human. Buber's method impels him to make a truth claim: Job's view represents the biblical vision of the prophets in contrast to pagan mythology. Buber suggests that where priests often turn to magic, much as

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 117 Job's friends turn to morality, as a means of compelling God to act in humanly comprehensible ways, prophets faithfully recall the ambiguity of their call to a religious vocation. While gnostics convey only hints and myths about their truth, seeking to reserve their knowledge to themselves (just as the opening sections of Job sketches the workings of the heavenly court with laconic suggestiveness), prophets seek to share the knowledge of God with all (thus Job, in the epilogue, intercedes on behalf of his friends so that they too may recognize the dialogical nature of divinity). Thus for Buber the Book of Job is made up of "reminiscences of prophetic life and language."36 Buber's explanation of the prophetic message in the Book of Job deepens an appreciation of its value for people today, even if his claim to have uncovered its distinctive difference from paganism may be challenged. Yehezkel Kaufmann may be right in seeing the biblical tale as a polemic against the wisdom tradition of the ancient Near East. He suggests that the story pits the "sage" who acknowledges the existence of God but who claims that divinity lacks any connection with morality against the "righteous man" who refuses to separate morality and justice from the deity.37 Nevertheless, while Kaufmann shows how the text might fit a cultural context in which pagan and Israelite competed against one another, Buber opens the book to modern reflection. The alternative perspectives he shows claim allegiance even today. While

118 BUBER AND THE BIBLE Buber's own exegesis of Job never fully explains its presuppositions, and thus Buber may be using his own method too broadly, the careful reader can go beyond Buber himself. Such a reader may agree with Kaufmann that the Book of Job differs significantly from ancient Near Eastern mythic precedent. That reader might also admit that Buber may not have uncovered the intentions of the original author of Job; scholars may dispute Buber's evidence for locating the book in a particular time and place. An unprejudiced view, however, should also allow that Buber has pointed out themes and possibilities in the Book of Job that speak directly and significantly to modern people trying to make sense out of life.

MAGIC AND THE BIBLE The Book of Job opens with what Buber identifies as a typical "Oriental myth": that of the divine council. God appears surrounded by divine beings who serve him as royal ministers. The book makes little use of this motif but still displays what Buber considers distinctive in the biblical use of such a myth: the supernal ministers appear anonymously. They have "neither individual names, nor individual forms, nor individual myths"; even "the Satan" applies only to a specific function, not a specific personality. Personality, Buber comments, befits God alone.38 The relatively minor role of this myth in the Book of Job

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 119 reflects its sphere of concern. Where the author of Job focuses on what people may know, the divine council myth centers its concern on human power. Ancient magicians often appealed to divine forces to aid their work. Magic seeks to control earthly life through the manipulation of heavenly powers. Magic extends the causality of nature into the spiritual realm. As human beings strive to bend nature to fulfill their will, so they use incantations and rituals to influence supernal potencies for their own gain. The biblical appropriation of this myth challenges magic with its alternative perspective. Buber's theory of biblical mythology suggests that biblical authors recognized the power implicit in ancient magical myths of the divine council. While inheriting that myth, they nevertheless intuited how later transmission had distorted its primal meaning. As magic, the story obliterates the initiating impulse for the myth. The author of Job therefore restores the myth to its original meaning. Buber conceives of this author as taking "dogmas in process of formation" and setting "over against them the force of the new question, the question brought into being out of experience."39 Biblical myth-making, from this perspective, took traditional dogmas, ideas, and images crystallized in religion and revived them by connecting them with experience. Buber argues that this continuing process leads from the story of Job to the full-bodied rejection of polytheistic paganism by Second Isaiah. Buber recognized

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and affirmed this prophet's ridicule of idolatry and considered it a peculiar historical expression. The prophet who clearly "knows about the drama between God and man" no longer uses mythic images but creates a historical image: the servant of Yahweh hidden in the divine quiver awaiting God's use.40 Emphasizing this aspect of the development of biblical thought, Buber avoids using the terminology of "myth." His portrayal of the hidden messiah, however, linked with his interpretation of Job fits his own definition of myth. The line of evolution from Job, who seeks a personal IYou answer from the Creator, to Isaiah's servant, who anticipates the Creator's call to emerge from mystery, suggests a mythic continuity. Henri Frankfort mentions both Job and Second Isaiah in his analysis of the "abysmal difference" between Hebrew and earlier ancient Near Eastern thought. Unlike Buber, he suggests that the emphasis on a relationship between the individual Israelite and the one deity who rules the world yields only despair. The Israelite who confronts this deity finds that everything else in the world has "shrivelled to nothingness before the absolute value which was God." Israelite thought removed the magical control that primitive people held over the world and replaced it with no suitable alternative. The biblical material retains traces of primitive myth but distorts those traces so completely that the Israelites have no power over their own destiny.41

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An alternative approach interprets biblical myth as equally primitive and magical, but related to social rather than intellectual structures. In contrast to Buber's view, this approach traces the influence of ancient Near Eastern magical religion on the Hebrew Bible and suggests that the latter diluted rather than improved on the former. Frank Cross analyzes biblical myth from a comparative perspective and reaches a similar conclusion.42 He devotes attention to Israel's Psalms and their mythical allusions. Psalm 82, for example, uses the image of Yahweh in the council of the gods. The Psalm draws on the Canaanite notion of El as the prototypical king and may have originally sought to influence judicial decisions by an appeal to a higher court. In its final shape, however, the Psalm takes on special significance in Israelite politics. Cross explains the sociological function that this Psalm played, claiming that "With the institution of kingship in Israel and the temple cultus, both institutions of Canaanite origin, the old myths became resurgent."43 The Psalm as myth could symbolize a social and institutional change. When Yahweh ousts El from the pantheon, the older deities lose their permanence and power. The Psalm need not reflect on the human condition but rather explains the transformed institutional cult, now centralized in one shrine— probably Jerusalem— in which one official— probably the king— performs the

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ritual action.44 In their primitive form, then, the Psalms offered the people of Israel a magical means for protecting their national prosperity. Only after losing faith in that nation did they take on the personal and individualistic cast they now possess. From this perspective Frankfort is right; the Bible reflects ancient Israel's failure of nerve. Buber's reflections on the Psalms reach a very different conclusion.45 His German (and English) presentation of Psalms 1, 12, 14, 73, and 82 place them in an order that he claims reflects their answer to the question of human existence, and he describes his essay as an "existential exegesis." The Psalms lead from the problems of Psalm 12 to the solution in Psalm 1 and then open the modern question: how can an evil will exist if God exists?46 This structure seems to reveal the Psalms as mythic responses to an I-You meeting. A creative reading of the Psalms places a person face to face with the divine other. In such a case "they complete one another like the stages of a personal way" and evoke a contemporary response.47 The Hebrew presentation of the same material, however, proceeds from Psalm 1 through Psalm 82. That study affirms that what Franz Kafka could not discover in his reality (a word of comfort) "is to be found in this Psalm." Here the most clearly mythical Psalm in which God appears in the midst of the angels (literally "gods" or "divine beings") serves to offer human

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 123 beings a glimpse of hope. Without claiming that the entire structure represents one mythic response, Buber's analysis pays closer attention to detail than Cross' and shows how an imagistic evocation of the deity may recall and awaken the possibility of an I-You meeting.48 The Psalm begins by announcing God's presence in the angelic court and continues with God's accusation that these gods are unjust. The Psalmist then recognizes that the pagan deities are of no importance and will eventually be deposed from their high positions. Most scholars point to Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:1-10 as examples of what may happen to such beings. The Psalm ends with an invocation: the Psalmist urges God to do in reality what the Psalm projects him having done in the supernal realm. He, the just deity, should take the reins of government from the hands of the unjust gods. The mythical image remains in place: the heavenly council abides and controls sublunar life. Nevertheless, the author hopes that God's own action will end the injustice of such a condition. Buber's commentary characterizes the Psalm as a polemic against understanding "the history of the human race as a continuation of the history of nature" and against "the delusion that the way of man can be determined from the general customs of the animals."49 The members of God's council err because they engage in power politics. They assume that might determines who deserves the governance of human life. The Psalm, on this reading, addresses the historical human condition,

124 BUBER AND THE BIBLE not some "cosmic circle of a heavenly host." The author agrees that God does delegate authority and that heavenly princes may well adjudicate the fate of nations. Nevertheless, the heavenly principle of government, like the earthly one, remains the basis for justice.50 The Psalm teaches earthly rulers who, like supernal ones, act as intermediaries between the divine being and the human community that only justice legitimates their power. Buber, here as with Job, moves from this study of a text to its originating event. He traces the Psalm back to a human experience, claiming that it only begins with the testimony of the human author. Later, Buber suggests, the author translated his testimony about his life, into a literary work. That poem sought to convey a vision that confirmed God as ruler over the world. Out of a private I-You meeting, the poet crafted a moral lesson: "those who were entrusted with the office of judge succumbed to injustice" but were themselves punished. The author moved from direct experience to a general lesson: the chaos of history does not represent the final truth. Ultimately, righteousness, justice, and human concern for the afflicted prevail. This "true" experience of history counteracts the "false" myths that evoke the pessimistic determinism that Frankfort seems to accept.51 Once again, Buber, if judged by his own criterion, succeeds better than his more scholarly opponents. While Cross may be

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 125 right about the history and politics behind the creation of the Psalm, Buber evokes a sense of its generally human importance. While Frankfort may characterize paganism accurately, the Psalm does not now reflect a "failure of nerve" when people read it and probably had ceased to do so even when canonized by later generations of Jewish leaders. In this way, Buber's reconstruction, while historically perhaps less exact than that of Cross or that of Frankfort, nevertheless enables modern readers to enter into the spirit of the Psalm. Buber shows how biblical myth may transcend science and magic, and, despite Frankfort's opinion, retain meaning in the face of changing social conditions.

MYTH AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

Buber's description of his interpretation of the Psalms as "an existential exegesis" seems to fall under the general rubric of "demythologization." Buber translates mythic language into a theory about human existence, a technique often associated with the German theologian and New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann. Introducing his study of Christian religion, Buber acknowledges his debt to Bultmann. Not only as an author and philosopher but also as a colleague Bultmann helped Buber learn the meaning of the New Testament.52 Despite this acknowledgment, however, Buber disagrees with Bultmann's approach to myth

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generally and to the myth of the New Testament in particular. Bultmann claims that myth does not "present an objective picture of the world as it is" but rather expresses human self-understanding. Myth appears to describe externally real events but in fact conveys an attitude toward reality. On this reading "the importance of the New Testament mythology lies not in its imagery but in the understanding of existence which it enshrines."53 Applying this view of mythology to the New Testament, Bultmann recognizes in Jesus both a historical person and a mythical figure. He suggests that if the mythological language describing Jesus merely attempts to "express the meaning of the historical figure of Jesus and the events of his life," then the important message lies in this meaning, not "the objective form in which they are cast." The facts of the New Testament stories, then, are less important than "the meaning of the Person of Jesus for faith."54 Bultmann therefore reads the stories of the New Testament as mythical expressions of an existential meaning, seeing the concrete language as a vehicle for an intellectual content that modern scholars can decipher. Buber's approach differs radically. He agrees that much of the New Testament reflects a "crystallization" of the mythical element, an element he traces back to Greek rather than Jewish sources. He identifies the core of the New Testament, however, with Judaic, and more specifically prophetic, religion. The message of the New Testament, he claims, "has its origin not in the

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 127 mythical imagination but in the (prophetic) view of historical reality."55 Buber's studies of the New Testament seek out the historical kernel around which the myth formed. Since religion often distorts the myths it uses, Buber pushes behind the late forms of the myths to what he considers their historical origins. At the heart of the tales, he argues, stands the living teacher Jesus. That teacher reached out to other people, touched them with an I-You relationship, and transformed their lives. As Christianity developed, however, that I-You immediacy became muted and eventually lost. Buber remarks on the difference between Jesus' dialogue with a rabbi in Mark 10, in which Jesus approves of the rabbinic way to God, and the interchanges in the Gospel of John. When John's Jesus proclaims, "No one comes to the father except by me," Buber no longer hears the same voice speaking as in Mark. He admits, "I hold to the former speaker (i.e., Mark's Jesus) and not to the latter (i.e., John's Jesus)."56 In his search for the "authentic" experiences of Jesus found in the New Testament, Buber rejects the Gospel of John as a reliable witness. He considers the myths its preserves no longer the pristine Jewish myths that he associates with the biblical tradition. The Gospel of John seems to Buber a paradigm for Christianity's distortion of "I-You" meeting. He points to the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3 as a primary example.57 The story seems to take as its point of departure a historical

128 BUBER AND THE BIBLE reality: Jesus used the symbols of Jewish tradition, particularly those taken from the Genesis creation story, to advocate personal self-renewal. He called upon his audience to "follow me," and led them through his own example to a personal rebirth. The myth preserves this call since "By what he says Jesus does not intend to bar the way to heaven to his nocturnal visitor, but to open it." As the story evolved, however, it came to mean the opposite of its original intention and eventually taught an exclusivist view of salvation. While Jesus invited people to imitate his way, John's Gospel identifies an elect group of those who are meant to hear.58 Already in 1949 Buber had corresponded with Bultmann about this particular passage in John. Bultmann had claimed that the story could only be generalized: it teaches a lesson about human salvation, not about a real historical meeting in a particular case. In his later commentary on John, Bultmann says explicitly that the story "has been dictated by the particular theological interests of the Evangelist," who "nevertheless gives the Gospel the appearance of an historical narrative." Bultmann concludes that the "scene" created by the author draws on traditional forms and motifs and is, in that sense, a literary work; nevertheless, he calls this process one of "historicizing" a mythic idea. He looks first to the idea being expressed, not to a historical event that then gave rise to the idea.59

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 129 Bultmann discovers an existential message in the story: "In the encounter with the Revealer man is put in question in such a way that his whole past, which determines his present being, is also put in question. Only so can he be called to rebirth...."60 Bultmann emphasizes that this existential message, rather than the mythic forms and gnostic influences that he admits also abound in the passage, represents the contribution of Christian revelation. He contends that the text addresses an existential, not a gnostic, question. The point is no longer "a speculative account of man's descent, but a characterization of his nature," and thus, even in its mythic form, the Gospel represents a stage of "demythologization" within the New Testament itself. The focus on gnosticism clarifies the implications of Buber's approach to myth. Buber insists that later Christianity, especially Paul, but also the Gospel of John, fell into gnosticism. Whereas myth "brings the inexpressible to speech," gnostic thinking, according to Buber, "tears it out of the historical-biographical ground within which it took root."61 By equating gnosticism with a move away from history, Buber, unlike Bultmann, identified the latest form of the Christian myth as gnostic. Demythologization, then, from his perspective, blurs distinctions between two opposed types of religiousness. His definition of myth as a historically real event, as an event that cannot be reduced to primitivism, magic, or existentialism, leads

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him to reject demythologization even as he rejected other reductionist explanations. The modern reader may learn a more open approach to the Bible from Buber than from Bultmann. Bultmann's identification of a New Testament passage with a particular existential idea limits, rather than expands, its possibilities of significance. Buber's approach, however, invites readers to discover more and more nuances and meanings in a text and to use the text as a point of departure for their own living. A contemporary student of biblical narratives, Joel Rosenberg, reads those stories as interconnected systems of symbols and crossreferences. He points to the irony and sophistication found in the Bible as signs of its complex creativity. He argues that "the Hebrew Bible presents itself as a text to be reread."62 Buber's understanding of biblical myth encourages such rereading. While the specific conclusions Buber himself draws concerning any single biblical passage may need revision, his method does succeed in awakening a desire for reading and rereading the text. In this sense, Buber achieves his purpose in analyzing biblical myth.

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 131 NOTES 1.

Nahum Glatzer, "Editor's Postscript" to Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), p. 237.

2.

Martin Buber, Kingship of God. 3rd ed., trans. Richard Scheimann (New York: Harper, 1967), p. 15.

3.

Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. and abrdg. Moshe Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 390-1.

4.

Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 152-54.

5.

See Laurence J. Silberstein, Martin Buber's Social and Religious Thought: Alienation and the Quest For Meaning (New York: New York University Press, 1989), pp. 52, 58.

6.

James Muilenburg, "Buber As An Interpreter of the Bible", in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), p. 381.

7.

Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, preface W. Robertson Smith (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973), p. 298.

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8.

R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, ed. T. M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 13.

9.

Ironically, Collingwood credits Christianity with the "leaven" that leads to this great advance and contends that biblical Israel remained enthralled to a mythic "quasi-history." See ibid., pp. 17, 46—56.

10. G. Ernest Wright, The Old Testament Against Its Environment. Studies in Biblical Theology, no. 2 (Naperville: Allenson, 1950), pp. 19-21; compare his continuing argument on pp. 21-45. 11. Compare the analogous triple distinction among "magic, science, and religion" in Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic. Science and Religion and other Essays, intro. Robert Redfield (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948). In "Myth in Primitive Psychology," pp. 93-148, he emphasizes that "myth is a cultural force" and denies the consensus of "modern science at its best" that myth "explains" phenomenon. Nevertheless, by insisting that myth "supplies man with the motive" for action and by discussing the "myths of magic" at great length, his approach actually advances the "explanative" view of myth described in this chapter. I suggest alternative views of myth primarily to illuminate Buber's distinctive approach. For a more

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 133 comprehensive treatment of theorists of myth see Robert A. Segal's essay, "In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth." Annals of Scholarship 1:1 (1980): 3-49. 12. Ernest S. Frerichs has drawn attention to the parallel between Kaufmann's thought and G. Ernest Wright's view of biblical religion's historicizing in contrast to paganism's myth. See his "Ancient Israel's Scripture and Its Religion: The Achievement of Helmer Ringgren," in Jacob Neusner, Peder Borgen, Ernest Frerichs, and Richard Horsley, eds., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, vol. 2: Religion, Literature and Society in Ancient Israel, Formative Christianity and Judaism: Ancient Israel and Christianity (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), p. 29. 13. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, pp. 66-73. 14. See, for example, Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York: Schocken, 1970). Sarna warns readers against a "fundamentalism" and false piety and recognizes the value of source criticism and documentary analysis. At the same time he claims that "the disentanglement of literary strands does not constitute the apotheosis of scholarship" and argues for a reading of the Bible as a whole, integrated work. Thus Sarna accepts the findings of

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documentary scholarship but moves beyond them. In that move he emphasizes Kaufmann's insights about mythology (see Sarna, pp. 6-12, 53-59, 193-94). Compare as well Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism: Biblical Criticism From Max Weber to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 2, 1835. 15. Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 342; see the entire discussion, pp. 338-43. 16. Henri Frankfort, H.A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson, and Thorkild Jacobsen, Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1949), see esp. pp. 12, 15, 142, 244-48. 17. See the discussion by J. W. Rogerson, "The Old Testament Versus Mythopoeic Thought," in his Myth in Old Testament Interpretation, BZAW 134 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974) , pp. 85-100; see esp. pp. 93-96 on the "puzzling business of experiencing the phenomenal world as a Thou." 18. See the discussion throughout John L. McKenzie, Myth and Realities Studies in Biblical Theology (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1963).

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 135 19. Buber, On Judaism, p. 99. 20. See ibid., pp. 99-100; and Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 22 . 21. Martin Buber, "Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour," in Pointing the Wav, trans., ed., and intro. Maurice S. Friedman (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 192-207. 22. Buber, Israel and the World, p. 89; compare the discussion on p. 98. 23. Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, trans. and ed. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), p. 41. 24. See the discussions in Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Later Years, 1945-1964 (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 85-99, and in Benjamin Uffenheimer, "Buber and Modern Biblical Scholarship," in Haim Gordon and Jochanan Bloch, eds., Martin Buber : A Centenary Volume (New York: KTAV, 1984), pp. 163-211. 25. Martin Buber, "The Language of Good Tidings," in his Darkho Shel Migra [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1964), 272-83. 26. See Nahum N. Glatzer, "Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible," in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman,

136 BUBER AND THE BIBLE eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), pp. 261-380; James Muilenburg, "Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible," in ibid., pp. 381-402; the quotation cited is on p. 381; compare Glatzer's "Editor's Postscript," in Buber, On the Bible, pp. 233-40 (the cited quotation is on p. 238) and Shemaryahu Talmon, "Martin Buber's Way of Interpreting the Bible," Journal of Jewish Studies 27 (1976): 195-209; compare the discussion of Buber in Eliezer Schweid, "Buber's Interpretation of the Bible," in Joseph Dan, ed., Binah: Volume 2, Studies in Thought (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989), pp. 191-217. Schweid makes no mention of Buber's stress on biblical myth but does note the uniqueness of Buber's approach and its difference from traditional biblical scholarship. Buber, Schweid suggests on p. 216, "does not demand a return to the Bible but a return to the unifying message of life." Moshe Swarcz, "The Concept of Myth and the Question of 'Demythologization' In Martin Buber's System," in his Language, Myth, and Art [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1966), pp. 216-49, discusses Buber's response to Rudolf Bultmann; compare Malcolm Diamond, Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 79-80, and Harold Schulweis, "Myth and Existentialism," Judaism 6 (Fall 1957), pp. 302-10.

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 137 27. Zeev Levy, "Demythologization and Remythologization," in Bar Ilan Annual, vols. 22-23 (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 1987), p. 222. 28. Buber, "The Language of Good Tidings." 29. Buber,

Israel and the World, pp. 20-27.

30. See Buber's discussion in The Prophetic Faith, pp. 183-91, and in Darkho Shel Miqra, pp. 340-42. 31. See the discussion on this subject in Marvin Pope, Job: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), pp. xxi-xxv; 1-lxvi. 32. Robert Gordis, The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965), pp. 119, 318. 33. Buber,

The Prophetic Faith, p. 188.

34. Ibid., p. 196. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., p. 197. 37. See Kaufmann, History of Religion in Israel, pp. 334-38, and the more extended discussion in his Toldot. vol. II, pp. 604-23. 38. Buber,

Kingship of God, pp. 51-53.

39. Buber,

The Prophetic Faith, p. 188.

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40. Ibid., pp. 208-35. 41. Frankfort, 45.

Before Philosophy, pp. 242-

42. See Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). 43. Ibid., pp. 71-72, 186-90. 44. Ibid. 45. Martin Buber, Good and Evil: Two Interpretations— Right and Wrong, Images of Good and Evil, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Michael Bullock (New York: Scribner's, 1953), pp. 3-60; Darkho Shel Miqra, pp. 139-62. 46. Ibid., pp. 3-6, 60. 47 . Ibid., p. 3. 48. Ibid., p. 30; Darkho Shel Miqra, p. 162. For a recent scholarly treatment of the psalm see Mitchell Dahood, Psalms II, 51-100: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 268-71. 49. Ibid., p. 28. 50. Ibid., pp. 25-27. 51. Ibid., pp. 29-30.

BUBER AND THE BIBLE 139 52. See Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith: A Study of the Interpenetration of Judaism and Christianity, trans. Norman P. Goldhawk (New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 13, 117; compare Maurice Friedman, The Later Years, pp. 84-85. 53. Rudolf Bultmann, "New Testament and Mythology," in Rudolf Bultmann et al., Kervcrma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp. 10-11. 54. Ibid., p . 35. 55. Buber, Two Types of Faith, p. 109. 56. See Friedman, The Later Years, p. 85. 57. Buber, Two Types of Faith, pp. 117-26. 58. Ibid., pp. 124-25. 59. Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. R. Beasley-Murray, R.W.N. Hoare, and J.K. Riches (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), pp. 130-33. 60 . Ibid., p . 159. 61. Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), p. 249. 62. Joel Rosenberg, "Biblical Tradition: Literature and Spirit in Ancient Israel," in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible Through the

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Middle Ages (New York: Crossroads,1986), p. 87.

Chapter 4

Buber in Eden

BIBLICAL CREATION MYTHS

Buber's approach to myth focuses on historical memory. That orientation may prove a liability when investigating the meaning of general mythic themes. Mircea Eliade, for example, studies myths in detail and denies that the historical paradigm fits mythical narrative. He acknowledges that "Myth narrates a sacred history ... an event that took place in primordial Time." He also suggests that the meaning any myth conveys transcends this temporal event. Myth manifests certain realities that surpass changes of time and place.1 Eliade entitles one chapter on myth "Time can be overcome." He claims that the "tragic history" that myths tell "must not only be known, it must continually recollected." Such recollection entails telling the myth to bring back the original event.2 While history accepts the dictates of time and allows events to remain in the past, myth 141

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struggles against a sequential chronology of events. It struggles against time itself.3 Buber's view of myth emphasizes its remembrance of a unique event and its evocation of another unique event. He maintains that the biblical story of creation confirms this view of myth. Buber takes the story as a myth arising from a remembered event that points not to an inevitable human condition but to the possibility of future events: The Jew knows from his knowledge of creation and of creatureliness that there may be burdens inherited from prehistoric and historic times, but there is no overpowering original sin which could prevent the late-comer from deciding as freely as did Adam.4 Buber clearly notes that the story of creation influences Jewish religious life. He denies, however, that this influence takes the form of recreating the original event again and again. Instead, the story provides an object lesson from which individuals learn. This approach to a creation story contradicts that of Eliade, who emphasizes the need for continual "recollection" and re-reenactment of that creation event. Eliade, to be sure, notes that several traditions engage in a "demythicization" of creation stories but he denies that this apparent replacement of the need for continual renewal of primal acts actually abolishes myth.5 Analyzing biblical creation myths tests the grounds for Buber's historical view of myth against

BUBER IN EDEN 143 the views of those claiming that myth testifies to enduring and ever-recurring realities. Two elements that the biblical creation tales share with other mythic traditions seem especially relevant to the question of whether the stories record unique events of history or seek to evoke a recreation of perennial eternal actions: on the one hand they explain the origin of time and change, and on the other they portray the deterioration of the human situation and the appearance of evil (often associated with a demonic figure). Genesis 1:1-2:4 describes the beginning of the world as a series of changes. With the distinction between dark and light change and movement become possible. Each additional creation supplies new possibilities for development, evolution, and genuine history. Genesis 2:5-3:24 describes how death and evil enter human life, through a snake whom many identify with the devil. Eliade comments on each of these two themes. He suggests that retelling the story of history's beginning overcomes its tragedy. By telling how the world began, a culture defends itself against the fear that since time devours all things, it too will perish. Creation stories mythically suggest that "Deliverance from this world, and the attainment of salvation, are equivalent to deliverance from cosmic Time."6 From this perspective Genesis 1 recaptures primal Time and liberates people from cosmic Time.

144 BUBER IN EDEN The text does indeed seem to indicate such an intention. Genesis 2:1-4 portrays the divine rest that "sanctifies" the Sabbath day. The seventh day in every week becomes, as it were, a liberated day, a day in which time stands still and people can transcend history. Abraham Joshua Heschel views the Sabbath as such an "island" in time, providing refuge from the historical time in which people struggle. The Sabbath provides a "likeness of God" that is "eternity in disguise." He goes on to explain that through the Sabbath people become "aware that every instant is an act of creation, a Beginning, opening up new roads for ultimate realizations."? The Sabbath provides transcendence by a weekly reenactment of the Genesis myth. It liberates those who follow it by a ritual performance that recreates the mythic event The second part of the creation story, Genesis 2:5-3:28, traces the development of evil in human life, a development traditionally associated with the devil. Eliade comments on such stories with the Genesis tale clearly in mind. Eliade notes the creative power of the devil in these narratives.8 More is at stake than merely "making a place for the Devil" in the world These stories do more than explain the presence of evil. They show its necessity, its association with the divine, and its affirmation of evil as both unfortunate and creative. The Genesis myths confirm this view. Even at the beginning of the story all is

BUBER IN EDEN 145 not well: God's creation lacks vegetation in the absence of both rain and human agriculture. When God creates a male human being, that creature lacks companionship. Thereafter God supplies animals and finally a woman to ameliorate the situation. One of God's own creatures, the snake, leads the human creatures into disobedience of a divine command. The three who participate in this act— the snake, the woman, and the man— receive separate punishments allotting each a specific function and task in the world. Only when this drama concludes does human history as such begin. The story leaves readers with a sense of the recalcitrance of the world and the evil that seems necessarily inherent in creation. The biblical story seems to echo this mythical view. Paul Ricoeur, examining the Adamic myth, finds in it a model of human evil and human repentance. The myth goes beyond telling about an original event that once occurred in history. It also functions "to generalize the experience of Israel, applying it to all mankind at all times and in all places...."9 As Eliade suggests, then, myth does not record a unique historical event in Genesis 2:5-3:28 but rather evokes a continuing repetition of primal actions. This brief sketch shows that Buber's general approach to myth may not adequately explain the biblical stories of creation. He explicitly confronts these questions and uses his view of myth as a reflection on the meeting between an I and a You to answer them.

146 BUBER IN EDEN BUBER AND CREATION MYTHOLOGY

Despite his emphasis on the specific historical event at the heart of a myth, Buber recognizes the universal force of creation myths. He concedes that such myths point to a generally human truth. His discussion of these myths articulates his theory of why human beings require mythology at all. Myths not only convey a memory of an I-You meeting and stimulate a new one but also express a view of reality. Buber declares that myths help moderns to bridge the distance between what they know intellectually about the world and what they experience existentially about themselves. Myths of creation, he thinks, tell people about the chaos outside of themselves, about the potential for order and the destructive evils of the world in which they live. Myths, however, act on more than one level. They not only describe reality, they make those who listen to them, or tell them, internalize their message. Because the Bible tells about creation, people experience themselves as created; because the Bible tells about evil decisions, people recognize in their own lives the temptation to make wrong decisions. Myth, in Buber's words, provides a "bridge" from the knowledge people glean about the world outside of themselves to their own selfunderstanding. 10 Genesis 1:1-2:4 describes a world of perfection, order, and meaning. The story confirms people in their beliefs about the rational world. The story also includes a command given to human beings

BUBER IN EDEN 147 (Genesis 1:28-30). The combination of description and command makes the external description personally relevant, important for private decision-making. Genesis 2:53:28 describes the chaos and evil human beings encounter. As such, the myth affirms the experience people have of life's sufferings. The myth ends with a set of injunctions, of tasks. Accordingly, the myth moves beyond description of the world to the implications of that description for human acting. By understanding Genesis myth this way, Buber makes the "historical event" from which the story originated relevant to all human beings. The new events the myth encourages are those of decision-making required of any and all human beings. Some biblical myths focus on social or political forms; some, like that of Enoch, wrestle with the meaning of religious leadership. While of general interest, the events celebrated in these myths may be of greatest use for others who share in the community of symbols, traditions, and history of those who tell the myth. Biblical creation stories, however, describe the more basic human search for meaningful ways of interacting with the created world. Buber, therefore, no less than Eliade, points to the universal truths embodied in myth. Buber prefaces his study of creation stories with a confession. He had pondered the difference between Jewish and Iranian myths of creation for some time. He first studied the problem in 1935 but waited over a decade before explicating his interpretation. The

148 BUBER IN EDEN ideas "took so long to mature" because his understanding of myth had changed. At first he thought, much like Eliade, that myths of creation taught general truths about human life. Every human myth, in this view, would testify to a single verity of human existence. If this paradigm were true, then the Jewish and Iranian myths contradict each other. A person must choose between the two and decide which is true. Buber's sense of myth as recollection of historical events, however, rebels against such a forced choice. Once he recognized that different historical meetings could produce different myths, he could reconcile apparent contradictions. While the Iranian and Jewish myths differ, they do not conflict. One need not choose between them since they represent different stages in any person's growing understanding of evil in the world. This final view suggests that myths differ from one another, insofar as each is true, because they spring from different events. When human beings interact with their world, they inevitably confront "evil." The nature of that meeting with evil, however, differs in different cultures. Sometimes a person discovers "evil" as an aimlessness, as a lack of direction. Sometimes a person grapples with a determined and focused opposition, an evil as self-consciously chosen. The biblical and Iranian myths differ because they preserve the memory of two "different kinds and stages of evil."11

BUBER IN EDEN 149 This insight shapes Buber's method of describing the myth so that it differs considerably from Eliade's. He analyzes a creation myth to discover the historical meeting it recalls. He sets as his task that of recalling "an occurrence as reliably, concretely and completely remembered as possible." That event occurred to an individual person. Buber seeks to reconstruct that person's experience. He looks at a myth as "an image of the biographically decisive beginnings of good and evil."12 While Buber applies this to both the biblical and the Iranian myths, this chapter will investigate his view of the biblical creation stories as a contrast to Eliade's perspective. Since Buber does not expect the myth to solve the problem of "time" or to offer a positive interpretation of "evil," he begins by asking what in a person's life could account for the mythic narrative. If myth represents a response to an event in one's life, how does the response point back to its stimulus? Buber does not search for a meaning "obtained" in the myth or a solution that "has been gained," but rather an originating event.13 He locates that event in every person's encounter with the other creatures of the world. Human beings, for Buber, live in two ways: as partners with creation and as manipulators of it. When a person learns that authentic human existence depends upon dialogic partnership, not manipulation, creation myths arise. The context in which a person learns that lesson differs from individual to individual. Any aspect of the

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world may reveal itself to a human person as in need of dialogue. Creation myths begin with such an experience, an experience teaching that "the human lot is decided by the dialogue between God and man, the reality of which fills the whole life and the whole world...."14 The mythic retelling of creation stories reawakens awareness of that event. Once before in human history, and thus ever again in that history, human beings heard a call to decision making, faced the need in turn to accept the responsibility of that call or deny its force. Unlike Eliade, Buber does not insist that the myth recreates the original event. Instead, he argues that one person's experience of the need for dialogue, for the decision either to enter into partnership with others or to manipulate them, becomes, in myth, an invitation to all others to make the sa.me decision. Buber traces creation myths to human experiences with failure as well as with success. The tales of Adam, Eve, Cain (which Buber spells Kain), Abel and their descendents reflect events in a single life. The author of these stories, he thinks, creates the narrative out of the complexity of one person's encounter with the world. This author, Buber insists, "must have experienced Adam as well as Kain in the abyss of his own heart."15 He discovers in the stories about creation an evocation of that experience in which the possibility of evil overwhelms human consciousness. From this perspective the biblical myths do not explain evil but rather acknowledge its

BUBER IN EDEN 151 presence. Buber contends that the biblical myths by making this acknowledgement arouse a modern response to the evil still present as an inevitable temptation.16

MYTH, GENESIS, AND GOOD AND EVIL

Buber's exposition of the myths of Genesis recapitulates his general theory of good and evil. That theory provides the necessary background for understanding the biblical exegesis he offers in his commentaries on the Genesis narratives. According to that theory, the mythic evocations of good and evil reveal how "the factual life of the human person" consists of "two qualities of totally different structure." Recognizing the "factual life" helps describe those structures, although without demanding a response to them, as does myth.17 The biblical account uses myth to recreate God's demand that each person "turn" toward God and seek direction rather than drift aimlessly, "seduced" by lack of direction. Human beings encounter a divine call but often refuse to acknowledge it. The story of creation for Buber reminds people of their role in creation, their ability to act as "helpers and companions" to the creator.18 The structure of good consists of readiness to act, of a willingness to choose in each new context. The structure of "evil," however, consists in detachment, in severing the connection

152 BUBER IN EDEN between one's primal drives and life itself. Doing good means making decisions; evil grows from a lack of choice, from allowing impulses and urges rather than decision to determine action.19 The central act that Buber exalts occurs when a person turns toward the divine purpose of creation. The Hebrew phrase teshuva and its German equivalent, Umkehr, describe what he considers the key mythic event. Philosophically, the terms suggest that when humanity returns to its original purpose, it fulfills its true nature. In that way a Platonic view of a return to the ideal combines with the Jewish emphasis on turning toward the God of creation.20 On this account, historically, and in the present, people have felt bewildered by the chaos of imaginative possibilities. They drift in accordance with impulses of the moment. Repeatedly, however, they recognize a call reminding them of the need to choose a direction, to decide on a course of action. The creation narratives recall an event of decision making, an occurrence in one person's life commemorated as a story about primal time. Buber concludes from the myths that "the humanly right is ever the service of the single person who realises [sic] the right uniqueness purposed for him in his creation." He also contends that this ethos "has its origin in a revelation ... of human service to the goal of creation," so that only mythic tales can convey the nature of the good as a responsive event to a divine call.21 The event of the turning

BUBER IN EDEN 153 that Buber finds in the biblical myths recurs throughout Jewish literature. Buber alludes to an ancient Rabbinic teaching: a person should learn to serve God with both the good inclination and the evil one. He wonders what such an injunction might mean and concludes that the "evil" inclination has been misnamed. In itself, the inclination is not intrinsically bad or wicked. Human decision determines whether it serves or good or evil ends. Buber claims that it becomes evil because man separates it from its compassion and in this condition of independence makes an idol of precisely that which was intended to serve him. Man's task, therefore,is not to extirpate the evil urge, but to reunite it with the good.22 Buber makes three points in this short statement. So-called evil has no intrinsic wickedness to it. When linked with "compassion," when part of the entire field of human thought, action, and choosing, this impulse acts productively and positively. Second, the impulse becomes evil only when it is separated and made into an "idol." Somehow, Buber suggests, by separating this impulse from the whole of the human situation, a person begins to worship it, to allow the separated impulse to substitute for the totality from which it has been severed. By isolating this one impulse that in essence acts for human good, people become slaves to their own inner forces. Evil refers to that aspect of the human

154 BUBER IN EDEN personality that when projected outward as a force on its own masters the very humanity that produces it. Third, Buber points to a resolution, a means of redeeming evil and returning it to its positive function by reuniting it with the total human personality. This view of evil sees it as an alienated part of human nature that can be reclaimed for human productivity. This focus on "good and evil" provides the universal aspect of Buber's interpretation of the Genesis myths. That interpretation argues that these myths preserve a common human memory: that of how evil begins. They point to the possibilities of human action for either self-realization or self-destruction. These myths of good and evil bring together the varied intuitions arising from human life. They unite the intellectual intuition people have about the world around them with the experiential knowledge they gain about themselves. As statements about the world of the past, myths confirm a public knowledge accessible to everyone. As stimulants to personal involvement, they awaken a uniquely individual way of knowing. This judgment shows how myths of good and evil illustrate Buber's general understanding of myth as the memory of an event. The myth recalls an event that once occurred in the human past. It appeals to those living in the present to learn from and emulate the experience encapsulated in the myth. Insofar as myth makes present once again a crucial event in human history,

BUBER IN EDEN 155 it confirms ideas about the world. Insofar as it addresses each person's unique situation and demands action in the present, it speaks to personal knowledge about one's own self. Buber traces this idea about the world to an individual's encounter with evil. The myths of Genesis differ from other creation myths because the personal event they recall differs from those enshrined in the other myths. The distinctiveness of the biblical view springs from its distinctive core: a remembered human event in which a person encountered evil. Confronting Jewish myth with opposing myths means discerning the specific event it recollects. Myths may be equally true but point to different primal occurrences; thus different myths complement one another. Nevertheless, Buber considers biblical myth primary since "the process need not necessarily go further than the first stage." While Iranian myth portrays a real and unfortunate human possibility, biblical myth shows the challenge awaiting each person and the way to avoid going beyond the earliest forms of temptation to evil.23 GOOD AND EVIL AND "I AND THOU"

Buber enunciates his view of good and evil in his introduction to I-Thou thinking, I and Thou. According to that work, evil stems from indecision. When human beings evade their responsibility, they fall into evil. When human beings make a decisive choice, they avoid the trap of evil.

156 BUBER IN EDEN Indecision leads to detachment, isolation, and self-absorption. Evil occurs when people move through their lives without conscious choosing, without weighing the consequences of their own deeds. Evil springs up when the selfish drive, inherently unobjectionable, separates from the human awareness of community, from "the plasma of communal life," and allows it to grow untempered by relationship with others.24 Since the impulse is not by nature evil, it can be used for beneficent purposes. The evil impulse is not intrinsically wicked. It represents the claims of a choice not yet taken, an option not yet realized. When people choose consciously, they acknowledge the good even in that which they reject. To act truly, Buber suggests, entails funneling "all the force of the other," of the path not chosen, into the action that in fact has been chosen. Evil lies in seeing only one side of the picture, in affirming only one part of the entire whole.25 Nahum Glatzer, whose close personal association with Buber makes him a sensitive anthologist and interpreter of his work, contends that Buber's evaluation of biblical myth springs from his I-Thou philosophy.26 Glatzer demonstrates the affinity between Buber's reflection on the quest of "realization of the I-Thou relation" and the biblical language of events and concrete situations. Buber seems to find biblical ways of speaking generally, and prophetic language particularly, congenial to his own philosophy. In the case of the theme of the

BUBER IN EDEN 157 creation myths, however, Glatzer suggests, both Buber and the Bible as read by Buber share a singular blindness. Buber, whether as creative philosopher or as exegete, "seemingly ignores, or at least underestimates, the power of evil in the world .... To Buber, the biblical attitude to creation precludes the independent existence of any evil power."27 Thus Buber finds his own aversion to evil as a positive force in the biblical writings. Buber claims the reverse as true: his view of good and evil derives from the Bible. His explanation of good and evil in Genesis 1-3 sketches three stages: in the first stage human beings confront the vast possibilities presented by free choice; in the second stage, overwhelmed by those possibilities, they allow imagination and impulse to determine their actions; at last, they turn from impulse to decision.

GENESIS 1 :1 -3:24

The biblical creation stories represent the culmination of a long and complex tradition. While the evidence of influence from nonbiblical sources cannot be denied, those sources appear in altered guise. Most scholars consider Genesis 1:1-2:4 a separate narrative from the Eden story. The two stories, however, intertwine so that now "despite the difference in approach, emphasis, and hence also in authorship, the fact remains that the subject matter is

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ultimately the same in both versions."28 Genesis begins with divine creativity. Genesis 1:1-2:4, usually thought to come from a late priestly source, suggests that humanity receives a commission to cultivate its image and become godlike. In that version, everything occurs according to a clear divine plan. God begins the creation by distinguishing between light and darkness. Each successive day brings a more complex division among created beings or a more complex set of creations. The creation of human beings plays a distinctive role in this plan. Only humanity shares a common "likeness" with the creator and receives a peculiar directive: not merely to propagate itself but also to serve as the rule or measure of everything else. God takes the initiative and creates humanity, male and female at the same time. Humanity is to the world what God is to all of creation: the symbol of its true purpose, the standard of natural life. The story has moved from a simple division among existing things to a consideration of the major yardstick in all creation: humanity. The tale culminates with a divine blessing. On the seventh day, everything works as it should, and God enjoys a cessation of work. God stops, but the world goes on. This, relates the story, is why the seventh day is special in God's sight. Throughout the story, punctuating it at distinctive points, the narrative cites divine approbation of the world, "And God saw that it was good," finally concluding,

BUBER IN EDEN 159 "And the divine saw all creation, and, behold, it was very good." Beginning in Genesis 2:4b, however, another story seems to unfold. In this story, God begins creating with an unproductive garden, since agriculture apparently depends on human work. God, experimentally, creates a human being from the soil. (Buber notes that the term "human" comes from the Latin humus, meaning earth just as the Hebrew name given the human created is adam, from the term for earth, adama.) Because that human being seems lonely, God decides it needs a partner. One after another, God creates the animals and brings them to the human, who names each one of them but does not consider any a fit partner.29 Finally, God puts the human to sleep and, from its rib, makes a female. At this point new names enter the story "ish" (or man) and "isha" (woman); henceforward even the generic "adam" seems to refer only to the male. The text comments that, since woman was taken from man, a man must leave his parents to follow his woman and cleave to her. The story does not end happily here. Instead, tragedy occurs. The human was permitted to eat from all the trees in the garden except two: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, warned that on the day of eating from it, death would follow. While never explaining the relationship among the man, woman, and the animals, the story quickly moves to a confrontation between one creature, the

160 BUBER IN EDEN naked/clever (the word used can have both meanings) snake. This description is apt since the snake entices the woman to reach out for cleverness, and she thereby sees that she is naked. The story tells that the serpent suggests to the female human being that God has forbidden her to eat from any tree in the garden. She, of course, contradicts the snake and notes that the prohibition extends only to the fruit of one tree. She, however, adds a touch of her own that complicates the choice further by claiming that God forbade not only eating the fruit but handling it as well. The snake tempts her by suggesting that she will not die from the fruit but will rather "become like divinity, knowing good and evil." The woman looks longingly at the tree and "sees" that its fruit is good to eat. She eats from it and shares the fruit with the man. After eating, the two become aware that they are naked (notice the artistic pun: they become aware that they resemble the snake). Other, less immediate, consequences follow. God adds special privations to the natural results following the attainment of the knowledge of good and evil. These consequences, usually understood as punishments, focus on the role played by each participant in the tale: the snake need never labor for food but must eat the dust of the earth and bear an eternal enmity with humanity; the woman must "labor" in pain, giving birth to children; and men must "labor" in sweat, plowing the fields. Although God pronounces these facts of life,

BUBER IN EDEN 161 they flow logically from the deed itself. The snake's cleverness leads to its own degradation and alienation from humanity. The woman's imagination leads her to accept the pain of childbirth willingly. The man's subservience to the woman provides the foundation for that necessity and eros Freud called the basis of civilization and its discontents. This division of labor in the aftermath of human disobedience deserves detailed analysis.30 God's decrees do not seem arbitrary punishments but rather statements of the human condition articulated in clear relationship to the story as told. Here the consequences of refusing decision take place in the realm between partners in dialogue. When dialogue becomes monologue, when deceit rather than truth forms the subject of speech, relationships suffer. Humanity and the animals no longer enjoy companionship but maintain an uneasy enmity. Women no longer live as helpmates to men but waver in a tense polarity of power: they are needed as child bearers but have sexual passions which make them dependent on men. Men themselves, once at one with the soil that gave them birth, must now live out an ambivalent relationship with it. They "work" the soil that reluctantly yields briars for the laborer. An epilogue adds a distinctive, and probably once separate, note. Here the consequences of the act are historical rather than relational. Remarking that human beings disobeyed one commandment, God

162 BUBER IN EDEN ponders their fate, eventually concluding that they must be exiled from their garden "lest they eat of the tree of life and become immortal." This prohibition combines with a very different kind of act as God clothes the man and the woman with animal skins. The story has the trappings of a ritual. God formally approaches the human couple, presents them with a gift, and assigns them their duties. This act may be called "a significant symbolic act that firmly distinguishes humans from the divine."31 Human beings, far from receiving punishment, emerge from the Garden of Eden with new dignity, status, and purpose. The woman, however, gets the best of the deal. At the end of the story she has received a real name, Eve, and declares, "I have got me a son from the Lord!" (Notice that the man is left out of this!) The entire epilogue depends on an interaction of opposites, combining compassion with hostility, power with vulnerability. In effect, the narrative serves a single purpose: that of showing how human beings prepare for their mortal task. Were human beings to be unclothed, they would face the challenges of life with too great a vulnerability to hope for success. Were they to live forever, they could not reconcile themselves to the continuing disparity between their continued failure and their visions of success. Were women not given over to the sexual power of men, the race would disappear. Were women not given the power to name their children, they might not accede to their tasks. Taken as a

BUBER IN EDEN 163 whole, the final section of the story suggests that although the first humans erred and failed to make a decisive choice, new choices await them in the future; they have been better prepared for these choices than they were for the first decision that they evaded.

BUBER'S VIEW OF GENESIS

Buber's exegesis of the creation story illustrates his method of biblical exegesis. He traces the story of Adam in the Garden back to a core human meeting with the divine. The tale grows out of an individual's discovery of the choices of life. The experience of life's order followed by the chaos of social reality provides a biographical foundation for the biblical story.32 Buber thinks of the narrative as one that arises when a person sought to provide a "stammering account" of a personal discovery. He claims that a person necessarily stammers when describing the universe as "a chronological series of commands and 'works' from the divine workshop." Nevertheless, only such a chronology "does justice" to the reality that the person encounters: a reality that makes a demand, that moves from an "eternity" in which all remains static to a "history" in which actions play decisive roles. From this perspective the story of creation in Genesis 1:1-2:5 records how a person learned that the world is not

164 BUBER IN EDEN eternal, that history is not eternal return, and that every individual act makes a difference in life. As Buber puts it, the myth fulfills "the task of stating the mystery of how time springs from eternity, and the world comes from that which is not world."33 Buber refuses to distinguish this part of the creation story from the narrative of Eden. (Biblical scholars usually separate Genesis 1:1-2:4 from the narrative in 2:53:28 as the work of two different authors.) The first story sets the stage for the second by establishing the reality and therefore the requirement for decision making. The second story describes evil as the evasion of that responsibility. That evasion, Buber suggests, arises from an abortive attempt to fulfill the ideal inherent in the first story: the ideal of imitation of the divine. The first story implies that humanity becomes like God through making decisions in the world. The second story, however, describes an alternative approach to the same goal. The experience in that story reflects an attempt to achieve the image by "seizing" it and leaping out of the human predicament to usurp divinity. The second approach seeks to perfect the "image" of God within humanity by arrogating divine power rather than by exercising divine discretion. Both stories experience: they spirit's will to command to serve

reflect on a single give "witness to the perfection and to the the spirit." Creation

BUBER IN EDEN 165 itself, then, justifies two urges. The impulse to become like God expresses itself sometimes as an obedient fulfillment of human potential and sometimes as a demonic usurpation of divine reality. The description of creation, then, provides humanity with a goal and a warning: the goal of becoming like God and the warning against attempting to do so in ways other than through perfection the image within the human self.34 Since for Buber myth arises from an event, he must uncover the core experience to which this story responds. Certainly he recognizes that the story contains remnants of an ancient "myth of the envy and vengeance of gods." Nevertheless, he rejects that ancient myth as the basis for the story. He looks instead at a historical experience. One person, at one specific time, encountered the boundaries of freedom and recognized personal mortality. This person stood both as the member of a social group, that of ancient Israel, and as an individual facing the general truths of human existence. The myth, Buber explains, shapes its message in accordance with both aspects of life; therefore the text uses the names "YHVH Elohim" for God, combining a reference to the deity who leads Israel in its history with the universal divine force pervading reality. As Buber puts it, "This God is the sole possessor of the power both of creation and of destiny." The individual experienced the meaning of life as a combination of social destiny and natural obligation, of the limitations imposed by society and those

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inherent in nature. The view of God in these two stories seems "alien to the style of the rest of the Bible" precisely because it combines an experience of the individual as a member of society with that same individual's experience as a human being who shares a common humanity with all other people.35 The first story establishes the generally human aspects of the formative event: people face a cosmic obligation to imitate the divine. The second story begins with a more specific context: that of the farmer tied to the soil. The connection between the name for humanity given in this text, adam, and that of the earth, the adama, implies the nature of the ties binding human beings to the soil. People must treat the soil with respect and honor; the soil also has responsibilities and "has to answer for the offenses of man who springs from and is dependent on it." The historical memory at the core of the story derives from a farmer's experience. Not only have human beings come from the earth, but they can also pollute and destroy it. Not only does the soil nourish human life, it can also thwart human intentions. Buber emphasizes that the myth evokes a person's duties to the land and of the limits on a person's ability to transform the land. Buber suggests that a person once experienced the force of this mutual obligation and created the myth out of reflections on that experience. Not only biblical myth but biblical ritual as well

BUBER IN EDEN 167 preserves this experience. Buber illustrates this claim by pointing to the laws of tithing in Deuteronomy 26. The farmer must tithe his harvest, offer first fruits to the divinity, and remove corruption from the land. Although apparently only ritualistic, these actions reinforce the bonds of dependency linking humanity and the soil.36 What myth conveys through narrative, ritual communicates through actions. For Buber, the first two chapters of Genesis record a person's experience with the process of decision making. That person recognized an obligation toward the world through its order and perfection. The myth preserves as well a sense of obligation deriving not from the pattern of creation but from relations among the creatures. Human beings and the earth make claims on each another. Two sources of constraint shape a person's experience: the ideal, as established in the perfect blueprint of creation, and the actual, as encountered in the dialogue between that person and the natural environment. At this stage in the story "good and evil" do not yet take shape. Only their presupposition does: the human ability to choose, an ability brought to actuality through real decisions, through tests of humanity's use of it. Buber understands the "command" placed on humanity, the caution against eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as arising from the memory of such a test. The historical event at the heart of the myth grew out of a discovery made in the

168 BUBER IN EDEN midst of a crisis. The story conveys the intensity of that crisis as well as its presuppositions. The crisis begins because people face an ambiguous reality. The story, Buber suggests, shows that God does not "impose his will" on his creatures. The author of the myth makes it clear that a human being must make real choices; the demands of God implanted in creation itself and the demands of creatures out of their own needs often present people with conflicting possibilities among which they must choose. People may "accede to their creator or refuse themselves to him." This freedom provides the basic requirement for any choosing, any decision making, since without such a prohibition no decision would be either required or possible.37

DECIDING FOR DIRECTION

After the moral dilemma has been set, the author evokes the decisive experience: that of temptation and its consequences. While couched in mythic terms, the story for Buber records a real event in the past in which a person, overwhelmed by the temptations flowing from reality, experienced a powerful ambivalence. One impulse led toward decisive choice; the other led to lassitude and a refusal to choose. Out of the conflict of these emotions an author translated the event from historical to mythical language. The freedom and obligation to decide depend upon

BUBER IN EDEN 169 an honest recognition of the choice presented. As the story of the test proceeds, Buber suggests that the protagonists move farther and farther away from true choice. Both the snake and the woman use exaggeration to misrepresent God's word. They merely "play" with the word of God. They abandon reality for fantasy and carry out the rest of the incident which occurs in what Buber calls "a strange, dreamlike kind of contemplation." The woman "sees that the fruit tastes good." Buber remarks that this quality could hardly be "seen." The actuality of existence has been transformed by imagination. Fantasy rather than reality motivates the action from this point forwards. The historical experience at the heart of the story lies in this intoxication by imagination. The author reflects on the effects of such a drunken perception of the world. Buber claims that the story makes this imaginative intoxication the basis of a "dream-longing" that motivates the woman to eat the forbidden fruit. When the man eats as well, Buber also attributes this act to imagination. The man has lost touch with reality and acts "truly in dream lassitude." Throughout this "act" of disobedience none of the characters has taken the true prohibition seriously or acted out of conscious rebelliousness. "The whole incident," Buber concludes, "is built out of play and dream." The story reflects how an imaginative reconstruction of reality can overwhelm an honest appraisal of life.38 The story, however, does not end with this

170 BUBER IN EDEN moment at which a human being discovered the terrifying power of imagination. The story continues as the man and woman are confronted by God and receive new directives. The significance of those new directives lie in their relationship to the problems raised by imagination; they point to a means for moving from dream into reality. Buber looks carefully at the biblical narrative in Genesis 3 to discover whether positive action indeed occurs. Instead, he claims that the text records ever-increasing complications and prevarications that prevent true decision making. The key to understanding the passage lies in the "tree" from which humanity eats. If by eating humanity gained the ability to make true choices, to decide for the good and against evil, then that ability must lie outside of natural human ability. People must decide to reach beyond themselves into the sphere of good and evil. Such a reading contradicts Buber's interpretation of the myth. It cannot record an experience of falling into evil but rather of choosing it. Buber anticipates the problems raised by such a reading of the text and responds by insisting that evil remains indecision even after humanity has attained godlike knowledge. He suggests that the declaration must be understood ironically. While humanity may "know" good and evil, it cannot create it. God knows good and evil as a part of his essential being: "He encompasses them, untouched by them." Human beings, however, can "know" only at a distance;

BUBER IN EDEN 171 humanity "capable only of begetting and giving birth, not of creating," can feel only the conflict of the opposites, only their tension and not their resolution.39 The very meaning of the term "knowing good and evil" supports the view that humanity only increased its pain and anxiety by achieving it. Buber reviews the varied explanations commentators give to this term and rejects such common interpretations as those of sexual knowledge and general cognition. Instead, he cites evidence from other biblical texts to show that the term implies the knowledge of alternative options. Humanity can now evaluate imaginative possibilities as well as actual choices. Humanity now lies helpless before the onslaught of imagination. Human beings know not only what they are but also what they might become.40 Choice becomes even more difficult in this situation. Buber explains the new dilemma as the source of shame: recognizing "this so-being" in relationship to "an intended shall-be." Human beings, then, have fallen into a chaos of imagination. God must contend with a humanity constantly shaken by fantasies that have no basis in factual life. The socalled "punishments" with which Genesis 3 concludes provide an antidote for the human imagination. Buber thinks that the conclusion of the Eden story reflects the experience of a person who, having fallen into imagination and suffered its consequences, discovered a

172 BUBER IN EDEN continuing support for decision making and a guidance for genuine choosing. The story affirms that even if people must suffer painful consequences from their dream-like lassitude, they can still find direction and can be rescued from their helplessness. While the consequences of a person's lack of direction may be painful, Buber thinks that Genesis 3 refuses to call them punishment. God responds to human failure by providing new opportunities for development. Although human beings fail one task, they can confront new ones. Buber therefore stresses that the biblical story does not imply "original sin." God allows each person, including the main actors in the myth, new opportunities to make true decisions. Buber uses the second set of consequences that Genesis 3 attributes to the eating of the forbidden fruit to reinforce his argument. God provides humans with clothes while expelling them from Paradise. These two actions seem inconsistent. God shows compassion by the first and, apparently, hostility by the second. Buber, however, considers both equally beneficial since both point to the dynamic and creative aspects of human life. Buber claims that the expulsion from Eden reveals divine compassion. God, Buber imagines, seeks to prevent "the thoughtless human creature" from becoming immortal and thereby being destined for interminable suffering. Lest that occur, God grants humanity the gift of mortality. Death becomes "a haven, the knowledge of which brings comfort." Both men and women

BUBER IN EDEN 173 advance beyond their fixed limitations and grow towards decision making.41 The Eden story recounts a human experience: faced with ambiguous duties, overpowered by imagination, a human person discovered that lack of direction combined with imagination leads to disaster but that even disaster does not leave a person totally bereft of guidance and support. The myth exposes the true choice lying before each person: that between defective intention and true intention, between indecisive and decisive choosing.42

GENESIS AND BUBER'S VIEW OF MYTH

Buber's explanation of the Genesis myths chronicles what he discovers as the formative event from which it evolved. A lth o u g h

n arrated

as

a

ta le

about

p r im e v a l

times, the myth really conveys how one person experienced life's temptations and the call to avoid them. Buber's emphasis on the historicity of the stories goes beyond this general description. He suggests a specific historical setting for the formative event, even if some of the narrative materials the author uses may derive from an earlier period. Buber claims that the myth took on its final form toward the end of biblical history after Israel had experienced first the success and then the destruction of its national life. The historical event undergone by the original author of the myth took on significance

174 BUBER IN EDEN because it addressed the reality of the Jewish community. The older elements in the story combined with the new perception to awaken a distinctive way of interacting with the world. Thus the creation narrative, while "in its original content an ancient composition," came to play a late theological role.4 3 Israel began its career as a kingdom during days of crisis under Saul and David. Later, under David's son Solomon the nation evolved strong and complex institutional structures. That institutional religion, according to Buber, led to a decline in religious sensitivity. Prophetic leaders suggested new ways of understanding divine demands but went unheeded until the Babylonians decisively defeated the Judean nation and exiled its leaders to Babylonia. The exile of Judeans to Babylonia created a crisis that forced the people to reevaluate their tradition. The Jews in exile turned to their ancient resources and read them with new meaning. Buber locates the formation of the Genesis myths in this late period in which earlier material takes on a renewed importance. While the cosmic myth may well have roots in early Israelite religion, it remains unmentioned until the later prophets. It takes shape in the Genesis narrative as a rather awkward synthesis of traditional sources. This synthesis, however, reflects a genuine, and creative, human event. Jews in exile discovered that "every creation, foundations, blessing,

BUBER IN EDEN 175 commandment, judgement, punishment, election, assistance and covenant-making in early history is a kind of revelation."44 The stories begin as an expression of that new discovery. Taking form as myth, the stories evoke the possibility of discerning direction and purpose in a period of questioning and confusion. Written for and by Jews who confronted crucial decisions in their personal and national lives, the myth invites a rereading of ancient texts and provides reassurance that others before them, when facing such decisions, met the single divinity of all creation and found support through that meeting. The myth tells the story of one person's discovery. As a myth, however, it initiates a process by which others can imitate that person's experience and discover anew the same reassurance that the first author found. The Genesis myths then, evoke a call, a demand, a sense of response for all its readers, even modern ones. At every stage a person hears the invitation to "turn," to abandon indecision and to move into the structure of good. This message clearly parallels that of Buber's own understanding of evil in relationship to I-You meeting. He decodes the Genesis myth as an example of evil's potential for good that is central to this own philosophy. The myth portrays a vivid experience of the event of a "fall," by which Buber means a refusal to exercise one's inherent ability make a decision. It offers a case study of human evasion of choice and its consequences. Buber claims that the

176 BUBER IN EDEN Genesis myth evokes the moment at which "the evolving human person" faces "the plenitude of possibility" as an overwhelming and distracting force. Each of these possibilities demands human attention. The indecisive person feels the attraction of each alternative and therefore sways "in the dizzy whirl" of temptation which leads to an uneasy compromise of a false suppression of alternatives— false because "wholeness can never be achieved ... where downtrodden appetites lurk in the corners."45 The myth presents modern readers, just as it presented its earlier readers, with an alternative possibility. Despite their weakness and vulnerability, they can risk decision making because of a divine presence supporting and guiding them. When interpreting the Genesis myths, Buber repeats his earlier contentions about evil. These myths confront people today with the truth about evil: it "cannot be done with the whole soul" because it represents "a lack of direction." They testify that only using the "evil impulse" for God's purpose solves the problem of human indecision. The myths of Genesis provide an object lesson in the anthropology of good and evil to which Buber had already pointed in I and Thou.4 6 By heeding the myths, people evoke the call to decision addressed at each level of their existence and stand again ready to answer that call. Buber considers the story a paradigm for modern actions, not merely a memory of an unrepeatable historical event. Modern audiences discover their own potential by

BUBER IN EDEN 177 heeding the myth of the earlier writer. The story reveals to them their own biographical evolution as it traces the events experienced by the hero of the myth. Buber's claim that the myths of Genesis portray the "prehistorical origin of that which we call evil" seems similar to Eliade's view of myth. In both cases a myth tells how the problematic condition of human life began, how people lost their original perfection, and how they might acquire it once again.47 Like Eliade, Buber insists on the modern relevance of ancient myth. The historical emphasis that Buber adds, however, changes the perspective taken to myth. Myth does not require the modern person to return to an earlier condition; myth does not demand a re-enactment of an earlier event. Instead, for Buber, myth requires a new act, a deed born in this moment, not one that simply recreates an earlier one. That difference seems crucial. While Buber perceives a similarity between the remembered event of the myth and the present possibility for a renewal of it, he also accentuates differences. The modern who reads an ancient myth must take responsibility for initiating a new action. Such moderns cannot merely accept the script of the myth as their own. They must utilize the peculiarities of their present moment as the point of departure for their imitation of the ancient myth. Buber's analysis of the power of myth moves beyond Eliade's universalism. Eliade's inclusive studies merge Australian,

178 BUBER IN EDEN African, Christian, and humanistic sources without analyzing the differences dividing them. Buber, however, looks at the events recorded by single traditions. While Buber has a universal theory of myth as the response to a formative event, he places it in a specific cultural setting. In the Genesis myths he succeeds precisely because he points to a narrative coherence that integrates its psychological, structural, and historical elements without abandoning a general and universal understanding of the function of myth. Moreover, the particular myth in question functions to illuminate a general human dilemma: that of human choice. Buber's insistence on the particular historical origin of the myth adds to, rather than detracts from, its universal significance. Buber's interpretation of myth as reflection upon an individual's experience opens more possibilities for modern readers than Eliade's because he allows a greater flexibility of response. Eliade's approach reduces diverse myths to a single meaning, implying that moderns must accept that single message. Buber, however, takes the myth as a stimulus for new actions that, because their cultural setting differs from the original event, are different from it.

BUBER IN EDEN 179 NOTES 1.

Mircea Eliade, Mvth and Reality, trans, Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 5-6.

2.

Ibid., p. 91.

3.

Ibid., pp. 192-93.

4.

Martin Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 32.

5.

Eliade,

6.

Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), p. 73; see the entire discussion, pp. 67-91.

7.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), pp. 16, 100-01 .

8.

Mircea Eliade, The Two and the One, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 85-88. He notes "beliefs, myths and unsystematized ideas that are at the same time archaic and modern, pagan and Christian" (p. 88) . One could add that they are both biblical and nonbiblical.

Mvth and Reality, pp. 111-13.

180 BUBER IN EDEN 9.

Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 242; see the entire discussion on pp. 232-78.

10. See Martin Buber, Good and Evil: Two Interpretations— Right and Wrong, Images of Good and Evil, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Michael Bullock (New York: Scribner's, 1953), p. 66. 11. Ibid., pp. 63-66. 12. Ibid., pp. 118, 124. 13. Ibid., pp. 100, 116. 14. Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 85-94; the selections quoted are from pp. 88 and 90; the section continues beyond the creation story to include a discussion of Cain and of the Tower of Babel; since these texts are treated more fully in Good and Evil, the following summary of Buber's views will draw on that work. 15. Ibid., p . 131. 16. See ibid., pp. 64-66. 17. Ibid., p. 64. 18. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. and intro. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's 1970), p. 130.

BUBER IN EDEN 181 19. Ibid., pp. 98-101. 20. See the discussion by Theodore Dreyfus, "Understanding the Term 'Umkehr' in the Philosophy of Martin Buber [Hebrew]," Daat 9 (1982): 71-74. 21. Buber, Good and Evil, p. 142. 22 . Ibid., p . 95. 23. Ibid., p. 120. 24. Buber, I and Thou, p. 98. 25 . Ibid., p . 101. 26. Nahum N. Glatzer, "Aspects of Martin Buber's Thought," in Modern Judaism 1:1 (1981), pp. 1-16. 27. Ibid., p. 11. 28. E.A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday), p. 19. See the entire discussion of the creation stories on pp. 5-28, and also pp. liii-lviii. 29. Martin Buber, On Zion: The History of an Idea, foreword Nahum N. Glatzer; trans. Stanley Godman (New York: Schocken, 1973), pp. 10-11. 30. See the suggestive and controversial analysis provided by the feminist scholar of biblical archeology Carol L. Meyers in her Discovering Eve: Ancient

182 BUBER IN EDEN Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 89108. 31. See Robert A. Oden, The Bible Without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alternatives to It (San Francisco: Harper, 1987), p. 104; see the entire essay pp. 92-105. Oden's alternative to theological interpretations of the Bible leads him to emphasize the literary implications of the mythic genre. 32. See Buber, Good and Evil, p. 124. 33. Buber, Israel and the World, pp. 99-100 34. Buber, Israel and the World, pp. 73-99. 35. Buber, Good and Evil, pp. 67-68. 36. Buber, On Zion, pp.3-18. 37 . Buber, Good and Evil, pp. 67-68. 00

CO

Ibid., pp. 68-70.

39. Ibid., pp. 74-77 . 40. Ibid., pp. 70-77 . 41. Ibid., pp. 77-80.. 42 . Ibid., pp. 81-89; compare The Prophetic Faith, pp. 90-91.. 43. Buber, The Prophetic Faith, p. 89. 44 . Ibid., p. 88.

BUBER IN EDEN 183 45. Buber, Good and Evil, pp. 125-29. 46. Ibid., pp. 130-31. 47. Buber, "Foreword" to Good and Evil; compare Eliade's statements about the "fall" and "nostalgia for Paradise" in his Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, pp. 59-72.

Chapter 5

The Exodus

THE SOCIAL MEANING OF MYTH

Buber's analysis of Genesis 1-3 focuses on the experience of one person, of an individual whose I-You meeting illuminated the life of an entire Jewish community. Other thinkers focus on the social setting of religious myth even when they recognize the importance of an individual's experience. Such a focus often occurs when theorists seek to explain the connection between myth and ritual. These theorists, as Robert Segal suggests, study "the social function of myth ... the public active role it plays in society."1 Theodor Reik, for example, understands the myths in Genesis as references to an ancient ritual. Following the reconstruction offered by Sigmund Freud, Reik claims that psychoanalysis reveals "the truth of myth" and explains its relationship to ritual. Myths, he suggests, preserve memories from ancient times. The memories 185

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so preserved recall both an actual social event and the human response to that event. Freud studied the interpenetration of myths, expressed as totemism and ritual, taking the form of prohibitions and taboos. He suggested that both refer back to a primal act of civil patricide. An ancient human "horde" murdered its father and, coping with the guilt of this act, created myths and rituals to justify, legitimate, and sublimate the deed. The various religious traditions persisting until modern times still retain traces of this original act. "The totem religion," Freud explains, "had issued from the sense of guilt of the sons as an attempt to palliate this feeling.... "2 Freud's fascinating reconstruction of a psychological condition leaves the connection between totemic beliefs and totemic practices unclear. What Claude Levi-Strauss, one of the most profound anthropological analysts of totemism, sees as the "difficulty arising from the fact that so-called totemic institutions include not only the conceptual systems we have chosen to consider but also rules of action" remains obscure in Freud's analysis.3 Reik remedies this problem by looking specifically at rituals. While he takes Freud's pyschological interpretation of myth as a point of departure, he also engages in what he calls "archeological psychology" that discovers the rituals for which myth serves as a script. Those rituals express the psychological truths from which humanity tries to hide.4

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187

Applying this approach to Genesis, Reik offers a theory of the meaning of the "tree of the knowing of good and evil" that interprets the entire story as the script of a great ritual. The ritual of initiation, celebrated by the circumcision of the initiate, reveals its psychological meaning through this myth that grows out of it. Reik builds his case from the same material that Buber uses for his: the correspondence of name between adam and adama, the problematic meaning of the "tree of the knowing of good and evil," and the tasks assigned humanity after eating from that tree. Despite these resemblances, however, Reik's reconstruction of the myth differs radically from Buber's by focusing on its social and psychological meaning.5 While Buber and Reik differ about the Genesis myths, they do not differ so radically as one might suspect. The modern Israeli biblical scholar, Benjamin Uffenheimer, follows Buber in distinguishing biblical myth from pagan myth precisely because of its communal ideals. He argues persuasively that the myths surrounding creation, kingship, and Mosaic leadership reveal how Israel's religious egalitarianism differed from the social authoritarianism of other ancient Near Eastern religions.6 Uffenheimer rightly refers to Buber's analysis of biblical myth, and indeed, Buber discusses how myth can arise from the memory of an event experienced by a group. He claims that ancient Israel's most distinctive myth— that of its covenant with God— derives from just such a social event.

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THE EXODUS

For Buber, the nation as a whole rather than the isolated prophet underwent "decisive religious experience." Only as a member of a people does each Jew understand the meaning of Jewish religion.7 Buber traces the stories of Israel's formation, of Moses and the revelation given to the people, and of the covenantal experience of the Jewish people back to the memory of an originating communal act, just as he traces the Genesis myths back to a primary personal event. He designates the question of whether the memory "originated from its historical actuality or signifies only a late illusion" "decisively important." He tests the "truth" of these social myths by the historical accuracy of their portrait of communal experience.8 This approach offers an alternative to the myth-ritualist interpretation by emphasizing the social orientation of the Israelites as a confederacy under the kingship of God. Buber considers the entire story of ancient Israel, from its beginnings in Egyptian slavery through its national development, a mythical narrative. The story of Moses, found in the Bible from Exodus through the end of Deuteronomy, purports to be the history of the Israelite people. The hero Moses arises from obscurity to a position of great power, leads his people out of bondage, provides them with laws and leaders, and finally brings them to the boundaries of the land in which they will settled and establish a new nation. To call such a story "myth" suggests that the concrete events in a

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189

nation's history, particularly as reflected in the biography of a single individual, stimulated a social response that demanded more than factual reporting. References to divinity throughout the stories of those events suggest the reaction of those who experienced them as a transformation of their communal sense of identity. Buber usually calls this story "legend" rather than "myth." He has, however, called "legend" "the latest form of the Jewish myth." He contrasts the "god of pure myth" to the "god of the legend" and then contends that the latter "is the myth of I and Thou." The terminology may confuse an unwary reader. Buber does not contrast legend and myth as such; rather, he elevates legend as the most authentic kind of myth because it focuses on the human deed, on the lives of people.9 Buber considers the story of Moses such a legendary myth, one recalling the discovery of God's kingship by Moses, the people, and the nation.

KINGSHIP OF GOD IN BIBLICAL MYTH

When, in 1955, Buber published a third edition of his 1932 study, The Kingship of God, he emphasized that the "History of religion, like all of history, can only be carried on scientifically by connection of individualities and generalities."10 Unlike those who emphasized a generalized "nature myth" that dominated the ancient Near East, Buber studied the unique in Israelite

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society and religion. Although he traces the evolution of its religious forms and recognizes their relationship to the general social background, he refuses to see Israelite religion as merely one example of a generic type. He points to the "religiohistorical peculiarity of Israel" as manifested in its myths and in its social organization. Each stage in Israelite religious development grows out of a specific societal and historical experience.il Buber's explanation of his purpose in writing the book reflects his later thinking. By 1955, he had completed his work on the Psalms, the Prophets, and on Genesis. Nevertheless, he had already suggested his final views when working on the idea of the divine kingship in 1932. Then he remarked that he envisioned a threevolume work beginning by tracing myth back to its historical past, continuing by focusing on "the genuine historical life of faith," and concluding by hinting that only messianic faith legitimates claims for national leadership (a view directly aimed at the Nazis and their self-proclaimed nationalism). He justified this threefold approach by contending that "Myth is the spontaneous and legitimate language of expecting, as of remembering, faith."12 Buber hoped to guide the study of biblical religion from a preoccupation with "antiquities" to a realization of how the events celebrated by myth point forward to new events in the present. That preoccupation continued unabated. In his preface to the second edition of the book,

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191

Buber rejects the search for the influences on Moses, particularly the attempt "to derive the religious achievement which is connected with the name of Moses from Egypt."13 In such a theory the "social" element in biblical myth refers to its indebtedness to its social environment. Buber accepts the reality of cultural borrowing, but he finds it irrelevant for discovering the unique social structure of ancient Israel. Buber's contribution to biblical studies lies in his reshaping the nature of the questions asked about the relationship of religion to society. He initiated "a wholly new line of Bible scholarship," which others call "a witness to the religion of Israel," and which might provide a new direction to biblical scholarship.14 The explication of the story of Moses shows how myth recapitulates a nation's historical experience and prepares it for a continuing communal task. Throughout his explanation of biblical religion Buber characterizes ancient Israel's social structure as that of covenantal community. Three concerns unite such a community: theocratic loyalty to the deity; charismatic leadership, often justified by an appeal to the holy war; and bureaucratic routinization, by which institutions dilute the original power of religious insight. Yahweh, Israel's God, calls the people into existence. The nation therefore derives its self-identification from its view of God. Buber argues that this does not mean, as the French sociologist Emile Durkheim might suggest,

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THE EXODUS

that the divine personifies the community's own spirit of unity. Instead, he claims, God as King of the tribe "represents the power which transcends it, happens to it, which changes it, even historicizes it." The history of the people becomes its story by association with the people's God.15 Buber sometimes calls this kind of social organization "theocracy" but usually prefers to focus on sociologist Max Weber's theory of charisma to explain that social order. Weber connects ancient Israel's creation of a theocracy to its experience during the Babylonian exile. Until that time leaders contended against one another, basing their claims on different sources of authority. Priests relied on bureaucratic authority derived from their training, skills, and specific abilities. Prophets claimed authority from an immediate "charisma," or influx of a divine power. Kings legitimated their power by appealing to the dynastic principle; they inherited their right to rule. The exilic prophet Ezekiel, however, "paints a panoramic image of the good society and ... mints his visions into an intellectually constructed utopia." He turned to the idea of "theocracy" as a rational ordering of society under an elite of religious experts. Religious expertise will replace priestly, prophetic, and royal leadership.16 Buber focuses on the same tensions in leadership as Weber. He disagrees with Weber about the origin and meaning of theocracy. He locates its origins at the

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193

earliest period of Israelite life. From the very beginning, he claims, only religious experts ruled; only God's word determined how the nation organized its lives. At first, the kings, priests, and prophets understood themselves only as instruments of the divine. The idea that God rules through human beings, however, entails a problem. From that standpoint only prophets should rule since they alone manifest the charisma of divine selection. Kings and priests gain authority from tradition, not from an immediate act of God. Even prophets, however, have no clear right to power since they must demonstrate the legitimacy of their claim to charisma. Beyond this, not everything a prophet says springs from charismatic inspiration. At times, prophets speak for themselves. How are their utterances as mouthpieces of divinity to be separated from their personal views? Buber begins with the idea that only God can rule, but then he points to three questions derived from that idea: the problems of determining which leader actually speaks for God, of discovering a means of legitimating institutional leaders such as kings and priests, and finally of distinguishing between divine and human rulership.17 Buber thinks that covenantal organization solved these problems by providing criteria for deciding what was and what was not a legitimate expression of the divine will. He investigates the "kingly covenant" made between God and Israel at Sinai. He claims that this covenant refers to a unique event, different in essence from

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the covenants found in Genesis and those made with later kings. He suggests three basic elements in it. First, the covenant establishes a new relationship between Israel and God: they are now bound in a political unity. This aspect of the covenant establishes a new relationship among the Israelites themselves. They are now equals— each a priest before the Lord. Priesthood requires a certain regimen of behavior governing social, political, and personal life. The second aspect of covenant elaborates on that regimen of behavior by providing a social legislation combined with "the conception of a divine ownership of the soil." Because they have a unique relation to God and to one another, Israelites have mutual duties and obligations toward the land on which they live. Finally, the covenant reaffirms a theological presupposition: God accompanies the Israelites. The people and its leaders share the sanctity of the divine.18 Before studying Buber's use of these views in analyzing the Bible, it is necessary to review the biblical record itself.

MYTH, RITUAL AND MOSES

Modern biblical students have, since the nineteenth century, recognized the composite nature of the first five books in the Hebrew Scriptures. Following clues left by repetitions of key phrases, by strange and uncongenial combinations of symbols and

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metaphors, and by duplicate accounts of identical events, scholars unravel the variegated sources of the biblical text. Digging into the prehistory of the text, these "archeologists of literature" depict a bewildering array of sources that transforms even the most essential and basic motifs of biblical religion into puzzles and problems. The idea of covenant— a concept that many thinkers consider central to biblical theology— represents such an example.19 The story of Israel's enslavement from Egypt, its escape from slavery, and its receiving of a covenant at Mount Sinai dominates the Pentateuch from Exodus through Deuteronomy. That narrative provides a "master story" for biblical religion itself.20 The Bible presents the idea of covenant clearly and unmistakably; echoes of the concept resound throughout the entire biblical corpus. The biblical passages describing the covenant event itself, however, include some strange features. Exodus 24, for example, appears as a depiction of the final covenant ceremony in which Israel received its divine commission. That chapter in particular seems fraught with difficulties. The chapter begins with God's summoning of Moses, Aaron, Aaron's sons, and the seventy elders to worship Yahweh; it continues with a very different portrayal of the covenant event and only returns to its original picture in verse 9. Verses 3-8 clearly interrupt the flow of the narrative. Even these verses show signs of a complex

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development, as a review of their content reveals: Moses came and reported all the words of the Lord to the people, so they answered unanimously: All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do. So Moses transcribed all the Lord's words. He arose forthwith in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve pillars, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young men of the Israelites to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice whole offerings of oxen to the Lord. Moses took half the blood and put it in basins and half of the blood he threw on the altar. He took the book of the covenant and read it before the people who replied: All that the Lord has spoken we will perform and obey. Moses took the blood and sprinkled it upon the people, saying: Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these things. This passage requires detailed decoding to reveal its true meaning. Such decoding begins by noticing the double report of the people's confirmation of the divine pact (vv. 2, 7); the strange reference to the "young men" (rather than to the Aaronide priests or the elders mentioned earlier in chapter 24); and the strange proliferation of symbols, the most obvious of which are the twelve pillars, the book of the covenant, and the blood of the covenant.

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Reference to a blood covenant requires explanation since it occurs nowhere else in the Pentateuchal narrative with reference to the Sinai experience. When this symbol is made central, a strange story emerges: that of the confirmation of Israel's covenant with its God, an event occuring when a special substance, blood, sanctifies the actions of young men. This tale exemplifies a common theme in many cultures: young men pass into adulthood through an initiation ritual using symbolic materials justified by a myth. The particular complex of blood symbolism, a specific ritual, and a mythic story appears elsewhere in the Exodus narrative. While the blood symbol remains constant, however, the myth and ritual associated with it vary from passage to passage. The ritual of Passover, described in Exodus 12-13, places the blood covenant in a familial context. God, as part of the divine plan to free the Israelites from slavery, determines to slaughter every first-born male. The Israelites escape this slaughter by offering a sacrificial substitute for their own first-born sons. They mark their obedience to this ritual by smearing the doorposts of their homes with sacrificial blood, and God then "passes over" each Israelite home. Thereafter each Israelite family memorializes this event by a family ritual. The myth tells how each family escaped the fate of the Egyptians; the ritual focuses on each family's obligation for sacrificing the first-born of their flock. Exodus 13:14-15 summarizes the

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myth and its ritual without mentioning the blood symbolism, which is present only by implication: And when in time to come your son asks you: What is this? You shall say to him: By force God liberated us from Egypt, from the state of slavery. When Pharaoh continually refused to free us, the Lord slaughtered all the first born in the land of Egypt, whether human or cattle. Therefore, I sacrifice all the males that first open the womb to the Lord, but all the first born of my sons, I redeem. Whereas the myth and ritual associated with Sinai emphasize the communal and national aspects of the blood covenant, the myth and ritual of Passover focus on personal experience— more specifically, familial experience. While the Passover ceremony itself takes place in a community setting, Exodus 12:48 describes a private ritual: that of circumcision, a rite that determines who may and may not participate in the Passover celebration. The circumcision rite reflects still another view of the blood covenant, mythically associated with the story of Moses as narrated in Exodus 3-4. That myth constitutes an essential part of the larger saga of Moses, Israel's liberator, and only incidentally records the ritual performance of circumcision. According to the tale, Israelites, enslaved by the Egyptians, suffered great

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persecution, including attempted genocide, their people as a whole. In the course of this persecution Egypt's royal family eventually took in a baby Israelite as a foster child. That baby, Moses, grew up in a royal setting, but on maturity asserted his solidarity with his enslaved people by murdering an Egyptian taskmaster. The consequences of that act forced Moses to flee Egypt and find refuge in a wilderness country, Midian, where he intermarried with the natives. After a period of exile, Moses returned to Egypt as the liberator of his people. This stage of his life culminated in a personal religious experience reported ambiguously in Exodus 4:24-26. The deity apparently attacked Moses and was propitiated only by an act of circumcision carried out by Moses' Midianite wife, Zipporah (the text does not make clear whether Moses or Moses' son is the object of this operation). This strange and startling circumcision story of Exodus 4 occurs as Moses is about to begin his public mission and must move from the private sphere of an individual to the sphere of national leadership. The myth suggests that the ritual shedding of blood overcomes a person's alienation and enables him to join his national group. While the myth locates the ceremony in conjugal privacy, it recognizes the initiatory aspect of the ritual with Zipporah's proclamation that Moses is her "bridegroom of blood because of circumcision" (Exodus 4:26). The stories of Moses' circumcision, of the Passover sacrifice before the Exodus

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from Egypt, and the blood ritual at Sinai all focus on blood as a link between God and the Israelites. Despite the different myths or narratives, then, the rituals belong to a single tradition: that of the blood covenant. How did the symbol of a blood covenant become linked to three such different myths and rituals? Buber's interpretation of this text contrasts with that given by psychoanalyst Theodor Reik. A second and equally important alternative is suggested by W. Robertson Smith, whose pioneering comparison of the text with other Semitic rituals reveals the sociological significance of blood covenants. Comparing these three views illuminates Buber's distinctiveness.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE BLOOD COVENANT

W. Robertson Smith's analysis of blood covenant demonstrates its social dimensions. Smith focuses more on rituals practiced than on religious stories and symbols. From his perspective, the stories follow the rituals; the symbols gain meaning from their usage. Thus blood takes on symbolic meaning only by its traditional usage in a ritual. These rituals serve social needs and develop in response to communal motivations. Smith recognizes the importance of scholarly studies of particular rituals and myths. His main concern, however, lies with "a circle of cultivated and thinking men and women ... interested in everything that

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throws light on their own religion."21 The myths of modern religions and the explanations of rituals often differ dramatically from those of primitive or pre-modern religions. According to Smith, the rituals themselves, however, retain residues of earlier stages demonstrable by meticulous historical analysis. While Smith agrees that "In principle there was all the difference in the world between the faith of Isaiah and that of an idolater," he studies "The conservatism which refuses to look at principles, and has an eye only for tradition and usage."22 He shows his audience how a similar conservatism produced survivals of primitive religion within their own faith. Smith concentrates on rituals because modern religions preserve in them the oldest remnants of early religion. He rejects the primacy of mythology for a similar reason. He sees myth as a later apologetic, an explanation, after the fact, for these older strands in new religions. Such myths "are the falsest of false guides as to the original meaning of the old religions."23 Smith's concern for disclosing the primitive within the modern leads him to analyze rituals as the most important data in Semitic religion. That orientation toward the modern West, even when facing the Ancient Near East, shapes Smith's explanation of the covenant in ancient Israel's tradition. He considers the covenant idea a development from primitive times. Early worshippers, he

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explains, unified their social community by uniting with their deities and strengthened their tribal group by assimilating the power of their gods. They turned to magical ritual to accomplish this feat. Sharing some sacred substance such as food, clothing, or part of one's own body created a "living bond of union between the worshipers and their god." Surveying the data from Semitic religions, Smith concludes that this union occurs through a ritual sacrifice, usually of blood but sometimes of hair or even milk. Thus covenant represents a common life growing out of a shared bodily existence.24 In its present form the Exodus narrative focuses on the nation as a whole, on its communal experience, and Smith, while recognizing the various covenants of blood in the Bible, assimilates them all into this social explanation. He posits that Israel once celebrated a great blood covenant ritual and explained it by the Exodus myth. Later generations no longer remembered the magical significance of the blood covenant and invented a narrative explanation for it. They remembered the association of blood and communal identity but rejected the primitive aspects of the ritual. Smith uses this hypothesis to develop a theory about the creation of the narrative in Exodus 24. The biblical text clearly emphasizes that the blood sacrifice cements the community and unites its various members. Smith remarks that the place of the ritual sacrifice, the erection of symbolic pillars,

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the sprinkling of blood on covenantal participants, and the technical term "young men" applied to those participants all parallel general Semitic customs. He contends that when later generations forgot this meaning they reinterpreted the sacrifice as a celebration of revelation, as a symbol of the communal unity which they now associated with the Book of the Covenant ascribed to Moses.25 Smith argues, however, that originally this ceremony established a blood connection between the community and its deity. The mythic explanation of the ritual lay in the identification of all who shared a common blood. The Exodus story transformed this ceremony into a tale of how a common history created a communal identity. The story, then, preserves an accurate memory of the function of the ritual but misrepresents the means by which the original ritual accomplished its function. Smith's approach to the biblical narrative offers many attractive features. He weaves together many similar biblical passages and helps explain how they fit into a single pattern. His interpretation of the story, however, lacks completeness. He never explicitly shows how one version of the myth grew out of another or how one ritual action replaced another or the motives for mythic changes.

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One can resolve the problems raised by Smith's analysis by reducing the various biblical rituals and myths to a single meaning. The different stories and the rites expressing them appear as variations on one constant but repressed theme. The repression accounts for the necessarily complex and allusive nature of the differing accounts. In studying covenant narratives, just as in studying Genesis myths, Theodor Reik follows this approach, explaining each of the covenant descriptions as a subtle evocation of a primal psychological reality. While acknowledging the difference between the myths and rituals of the various biblical passages, Reik interprets each of them as oblique references to a single psychological event: a young man's resolution of the Oedipal dilemma.26 While Smith sees biblical covenant as a sociological act, Reik sees it as a conversion of primal psychological reality into the language of national folk culture. The ideology of the chosen people, for example, only appears as a social theory. In fact, it reproduces the psychological experience of initiation into maturity. Thus Reik reduces most biblical myths to a single purpose: they point to the ritual of circumcision and its psycho-social origins in primal history. Reik explains the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac as a similar myth that originally (although not in its present form) described

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an initiatory rite of circumcision. He interprets the various covenantal accounts as variant myths associated with the same ritual of circumcision. Often the biblical text seems to support his arguments: Passover must be preceded by ritual circumcision; Moses must engage in circumcision before fulfilling his task in Egypt; Joshua must circumcise the Israelites as a sign that they accept the divine covenant. At other times, however, the communal celebrations that Reik traces back to the ritual of circumcision seem to have a tenuous link, if any at all, with that rite.27 Reik explains the circumcision story concerning Moses as a symbol of national experience based on a private, individual experience. He associates the attack on Moses, with its clear reference to circumcision, with a puberty ritual of initiation. He explains that Israel conceived of itself as a chosen people because it shared this secret ritual. This sense of election, perhaps derived from Midianite tradition, provided ancient Israel and later the entire Jewish people with an "extraordinary pride and self-confidence" that enabled the Jews to survive agonies and tortures.28 Although Reik acknowledges Freud's insights concerning the typical myth of the hero found in the Moses story, he disagrees with Freud. The only true protagonist of the Exodus story, he thinks, is the Jewish people as a whole. Moses as individual stands for the entire nation; the election

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of the hero represents national chosenness.29 Reik thus differs significantly from his teacher. While giving an approving nod to various social theories, he actually reduces the story of the Jewish people to a projection of an individual's experience. The shape of the Exodus story today, he thinks, really projects onto the Jewish people what was originally a personal rite of initiation. The public ceremony merely masks its origins in private rituals of initiation. Reik considers the biblical account of Passover and its rituals a similar transformation of an individual's psychological history into a national epic. He concludes that "the exodus account comes closest to a report of a puberty festival."30 The sacred meal associated with Passover seems to him similar to celebrations found in the secret societies and mystery cults that evolved in other cultures. The Passover ritual, in this view, recapitulates in different language the same lesson found in the story of Moses: circumcision marks a man's entrance into adult society. For Reik, Moses uses Passover as a "revolutionary" initiation ritual. Faced with the need to unite a group of slaves, Moses created "a leap back into a more primitive form of initiation" that extended the "secret society" to include the entire people. Passover thus uses primitive rituals for a "regression to simpler forms of initiation" that democratized social life.31

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Reik discovers a parallel history behind the covenantal narrative. Exodus 24 does not mention circumcision, and Reik admits that "there is neither manifest trace nor tradition of a puberty festival or rituals in the biblical reports." Nevertheless, he argues that the covenant ceremony described presupposes a "primitive blood covenant between the young people and their totemistic guardians." The biblical story includes key elements in such an initiation: forms of intimidation, purification ceremonies, and teachings. He suggests that this evidence points in the same direction as the other stories that do focus on circumcision. "The origin of the blood covenant," he declares, "is to be found in the initiation into the secret societies of brotherhoods between members of different tribes."32 As with the Exodus stories, so the covenantal covenant narrative developed through a long pre-history from a psychological event: maturation. Reik's studies in "psychological archeology" trace the development of the biblical story as an evolutionary process. The earlier phases of the tradition included a "half-historic" memory of the departure from Egypt. This memory "became amalgamated" with the initiation ritual of a secret society. As Israelite society became more democratic, "the initiation was now displaced from a generation to all members of the tribe." By this time the story had "arrived at the origin and home of oral tradition." The ritual "returns to certain collective experiences which reappear in

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various forms as the motifs of a symphony reoccur in later elaboration." The themes found in the circumcision of Moses and in the Passover echo throughout the story of the Sinai Covenant.33 In this way Reik unites the various elements in the Moses story and points backward to primitive initiation rituals and circumcision. Myth, whether focused on primal individuals, on a great hero, on national rituals, or on the formation of the national identity, derives from a single reality: the rituals of initiation. Thus Reik, like Smith, acknowledges the social evolution of the covenantal ritual but argues that this evolution merely hides a more original reality, one found in depth psychology: initiation into maturity. BUBER AND THE EXODUS

Martin Buber's view, based on his covenantal interpretation of Israel's myth of divine kingship, moves beyond both Smith and Reik. Buber highlights the prophetic aspects of Moses as presented in the Bible. From this perspective, Moses succeeds not because he possesses some personal charisma but because he fulfills an appointed task. Although Moses creates a nation, Buber denies that he deserves esteem as a great politician. Although Moses transforms society and implements a broad social agenda, Buber refuses to call him a social reformer. Moses' success transcends

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its individual parts to culminate in the establishment of a people dedicated to God's ideals. Just as Moses' task goes beyond any set boundaries of social, political, or religious functions, so Moses' new view of God transcends any simple definition. That transcendent view of an all-embracing faith, Buber contends, marks the distinctiveness of Moses' achievement. The story of Moses provides "the substantiation of a ruling by God that shall not be culturally restricted." This comprehensive character distinguishes Moses from all later prophets, who transmit the same message but in a more limited and focused form. Mosaic leadership demonstrates by its comprehensiveness the eclectic concerns of Moses' God.34 Moses accomplishes his primary role by pursuing a task that surpasses that of either the priest or the prophet. As Buber imagines it, Moses' special task lay in establishing the kingship of God, thus setting the framework for all future Israelite religion. Moses represents, in this reconstruction, what Buber considers a true "biblical leader." While Israel had kings, priests, and prophets, Buber refuses to call them leaders merely because they occupied an institutional position of power. True leadership grows out of election and includes an imperative for innovation: "Only those who begin are then comprised under the biblical aspect of leadership." Moses' beginning stems less from his stature as "Israel's liberator" or from the stories surrounding his youth than from his

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contribution to Israelite religion. His innovation occurs in "the history of the wandering in the desert" and encompasses what might be called his failures. According to Buber, Moses leads the people because he provides them with a new goal. Even when he fails, he leads because "his work survives in a hope which is beyond all these failures."35 As in Genesis, so in Exodus, Buber traces the biblical myth to Moses' biography, not merely to history. The story of Moses, he thinks, records the life stations of a leader whose personal stamp remains visible even in later extensions and exaggerations of his story. The myth of Moses' birth records a moment of discovery in which he learns both the alienation of Egyptian culture and the need to surpass it through an act of liberation. The means to such liberation, however, elude him. Buber suggests that this lack stems from an incomplete self-transformation. When, initiating the second stage of his life (Exodus 3-4), Moses flees to Midian, he still appears as an Egyptian, not a Hebrew. The flight to Midian represents a return home. Superficially, that flight only furthers Moses' estrangement from his people. He leaves Egypt and abandons his people physically no less than spiritually. The biblical text testifies to the alienation Moses felt at this time: he identifies himself as an Egyptian and names his son "Gershom" to indicate that he is a stranger in a strange land. For Buber, however, precisely this flight away from

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himself draws Moses back to himself: "Moses came back to his forefathers by way of his flight."36 The revelation at the burning bush symbolizes this transformation by declaring that the God of his fathers appears to him. Buber interprets Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush as a symbolic statement of this success even amidst failure. God commissions Moses to lead the Israelites from bondage to freedom. Moses approaches that task as either a priest or a prophet. He expects the people to ask him for proof of his divine appointment. He therefore asks this God for his "name" and expects to be tested not with the riddle of pronouncing an unpronounceable set of sounds but "with its 'genuine' pronunciation, its magic applicability." Priests often use such magical knowledge to perform their rites. Denying this request, God provides Moses with a new conception of divinity: the God whose name means the one who is always present, whose invocation merely indicates a divine intimacy and cannot include a "conjuring." This new view of deity provides "His people the assurance which they need and which frustrates every magic undertaking, but also makes it superfluous." Israel can trust Moses not because Moses possesses divine power but because Moses shows them that they can trust their deity. Moses' intuition, however, takes hold in Israel only slowly. Later prophetic voices must reaffirm it. Amos, Jeremiah, and other, later prophets extend the idea of divine kingship originally begun by

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Moses, "the maturity of knowledge manifesting itself in them really only completes what was already there germinating in obvious vitality." Moses stands as a unique link. His desire to know God's name ties him to the priests, but the nature of the name he receives separates him from priestly religion. The declaration of divine kingship in the later prophets unites them with Moses, but he stands apart from them as the first to enunciate that principle. Moses displays a distinctive leadership, acting neither as priest nor as prophet but as one who initiates Israel into the knowledge that God alone rules over them.37 The significance of this initiation derives as much from the terror and resistance awakened within Moses as from the intellectual content transmitted. According to Buber, the experience at the bush overwhelms Moses with a sense of identification: the same God who addressed his father now addresses him.38 Intimacy and familiarity do not overcome Moses' doubts. Here Buber notes Moses' "resistance offered to the mission," which Buber takes to represent "the most intimate experience of the prophetic man."39 Moses meets the ancestral deity who, like Moses, has been alienated from his people. Moses must overcome a double sense of estrangement: he has been alienated from Israel; God, in allowing Egyptian enslavement of the Hebrews, has become alienated from the people. Moses struggles with this alienation and overcomes it only

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by accepting God's new name. The duality within Moses recorded by the myth suggests why Israel needs prophets throughout its existence. Prophets reaffirm the experience mythically reported in the Moses story: an individual feels both repelled and compelled by the divine. An event in which God calls a person to service includes both a positive attraction and a negative reaction. The hero must acknowledge both. The necessity for prophetic voices points to the defeats that Buber attributes to Moses. Moses provides a pattern, a hope, and an ideal. He leads not by succeeding but by offering a goal toward which the people slowly grope. The memory of Moses preserved by tradition maintains a pure vision of the Kingship of God. Buber thinks that Moses himself recognized this feature of his leadership and regarded himself not as a unique individual coming only once but as the one entrusted with the task, who as long as that task has not been fulfilled in its entirety must return again and again — not as the same person or the identical soul "...but precisely as the one continuing the fulfillment of that task, no matter what else that person or soul may be."40 The significance of Moses, then, surpasses his historical success. The story of Moses moves beyond reporting past events to conveying the importance of those events. Telling about Moses entails telling about his visionary ideal. Buber never explicitly calls the Moses story "myth." At times, he seeks to

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explicitly reject such a designation. By his own definition, however, the story qualifies as myth. It preserves the memory of a spontaneous response to an I-You meeting. It evokes that meeting and enjoins others to enter such meetings themselves. Buber imagines the "historical" Moses and seeks to "come nearer" to him by "testing and selective work on the text." By so doing, he recreates the "myth" of Moses to awaken moderns to the possibilities of human meeting. Buber claims to discover within the "sacred legend" and "sacred history" of Moses "the indwelling story of faith which inheres in them."41 This discovery arises from Buber's understanding of the Moses story as Jewish mythology.

BUBER'S VIEW OF MOSES

The story of Moses, including the ritual developments so important to Reik, seems to Buber to center on three events: the early life of Moses reveals the impact caused by an awareness of the divine presence; the instructions to the Israelites concerning the Passover identifies the effect of law as formative of Israel's cultural reality; and the covenant at Sinai provides the foundation for the social egalitarianism of Israelite community.42 Buber examines the story of Moses as a mythic evocation of these values of covenant community. Buber claims that Exodus 4 recalls and preserves a crisis in Moses' development as a religious

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leader. The tale not only records that crisis but helps others cope with similar experiences. Buber acknowledges that the tale includes echoes from an earlier tradition. He accepts the incident as an example of "divine demonism."43 Buber, however, claims that the experience at the core of this story emphasizes the importance of absolute faith rather than of God's demonic power. God "claims the entirety of the one he has chosen." The symbolism of circumcision, he continues, reinforces this interpretation. While the events in Exodus 4 demand a literal circumcision, Moses himself complains of having "uncircumcised lips" in Exodus 6. Buber comments on this "absence of liberation which is clearly not organic but penetrates to the core of the soul." Both literal and figurative demands for circumcision point to a single truth: the awareness of inadequacy plaguing any religious leader. Moses experiences what the Israelites and Jews will experience again and again: those who seek to bring liberty to the world find themselves unequal to the task. What Buber calls "the tragedy inherent in revelation" finds expression here. At the close of his personal odyssey and at the beginning of his national mission, Moses realizes the challenges and limitations of the religious task. The experience of circumcision for Buber merely illustrates in deed the same existential reality as the story tells in words: a leader's response to an overwhelming task.

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This equal consideration of act and story, of ritual and myth, distinguishes Buber's method from Reik's. While Reik contends that the story points back to a primal human ritual, Buber traces it to a leader's melancholy recognition that the divine call to create a holy people demands more than any one person can fulfill. Reik takes the act of circumcision in Exodus 4 as the basis of his interpretation of Moses' early career. He sees the story as a mask or disguise hiding the true meaning of the ritual. Buber disagrees. Both the ritual and the myth are inadequate but necessary expressions of a reality experienced in life. They do not disguise a primal event but testify to an event that words and deeds can never fully capture. Reik seeks to penetrate a mask; Buber seeks to explain the inexpressible.

COMMUNAL RITUAL IN EXODUS

Buber's sensitivity to the human event behind rituals enables him to move more easily than Reik from the psychology of the individual leader to the group psychology of Israel as a whole. Reik's exegesis of the Exodus oscillates between a Freudian reconstruction of early human history and his own reconstruction of an initiation ritual creating a sense of community and chosenness uniting ex-slaves into a coherent community. Because Exodus refers to Israel as God's son and treats the people of Israel

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as a single entity, Buber can defend the application of his "biographical" account to a social group no less than to an individual. The Exodus narrative reflects the collective encounter of the people of Israel with their God; for Buber, this means that it describes in mythic terms an I-You meeting that transcends daily experience. The transition from individual to group consciousness in the story marks the significance of the event. In the I-You meeting each Israelite discovered that personal identity also included a relationship with the Jewish people as a whole. Moses' own experience exemplifies that change. Moses learns that he must demand of Pharaoh to "let my son go that he may serve me." Buber takes this verse as a clue to how Moses enabled Israel to understand itself even while laboring under Pharaoh's oppression. Israel learns to call its God and king "father" because it discovers its own identity in relationship to that God. At first, the idea may have grown from the story of "a mythical procreation" (the I-You meeting is conceived of on the analogy of biological birthing; God brings forth the nation as a mother brings forth her child), but it developed into the concept of "adoption." Buber affirms the reality of the concrete event to which the believer testifies by telling a myth. The meeting with divinity as father "embodies itself in a concrete event, which continues to operate concretely." The event that formed Israel's national consciousness and continued to

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maintain that consciousness was experienced as a relationship with divinity, a relationship in which God gave birth to the people.44 Insofar as the myth of Moses conveys this reality of divine fatherhood, it recapitulates the event of the individual's discovery of this truth: Moses discovers how God acts as a parent with human beings. The biblical narrative progresses beyond this relationship to use it as the model for God's interaction with the Israelite people as whole. Buber traces the development of Israel's view of God through several transformations. It begins with an analogy between the relationship of God to Israel and that of a father to a son. It then evolves into the idea of God as a king, at first understood as merely an exalted father and then recognized as a political administrator. Buber claims that Israel experienced God not only as parent but also as the director of its institutions. Israelites considered themselves part of a divine experiment in which God would use this nation to provide humanity with "a living example of a true people, a community." The rhythm of exile and return pulsating through Jewish history contributes its sense of destiny and importance. In the history of Israel "national and human elements have always been merged."45 God requires this national body as an experiment in righteousness. While individuals perform righteous acts, only a society establishes the structure of righteous communal life.

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Israel's meeting with God led to the development of laws and institutions, leaders, and forms of government. Reflecting on that fact, Israel's prophetic thinkers concluded that God could only have in mind the creation of an exemplary nation. God as King demands a kingdom, an "entire nation ... (to) demonstrate a life of unity and peace, of righteousness and justice to the human race."46 The myth of divine kingship reflects the moment when each person in Israel recognizes that the meeting with God also includes an obligation for political action. Buber's understanding of myth as a reflection on an event draws attention to how an event in an individual's life can reinforce social meaning. He suggests that Israel, collectively, discovered that: "We can only work on the kingdom of God through working on all the spheres of man that are allotted to us." The rituals of Israel's political life reflect not the need for initiation into a separate "adult" brotherhood but rather a more general social truth: people serve both God and the community by recognizing that the community itself has a task that serves God.47 This view of Israel's God begins when God appears to Moses as master of natural events, able to transform water into blood, sticks into serpents, and healthy flesh into leprous skin, and as the concerned director of history who seeks liberation for the people of Israel. Buber shows how this story reaches its culmination in the Passover celebration.

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While Reik interprets that ritual as but one more, redundant echo of an initiation ritual, Buber shows how it represents a growing consciousness within Israel's selfunderstanding. Reik cannot explain why the various relics of a primal initiation ceremony occur in such profusion and diversity in the biblical story. Buber, however, offers a clear schema for understanding the transition from circumcision (the key ritual in Moses' personal drama) to the Passover ritual (the first communal ceremony in Israel's national history). Through that ceremony the covenant with God established by the circumcision takes on a social meaning, and Israel discovers its communal identity, receives divine instructions about its purpose, and gains assurance of God's favor. These rituals affirming covenant enable Moses to create Israel's self-conception and delineate its communal selfhood. Biblical scholars suggest a long and complex history behind the description of the Passover ritual in Exodus 12-13.48 Reik traces the story back to an ancient puberty rite, ignoring the broader context in which the tale now appears. Buber grants that the ritual description incorporates ancient forms that may well include "a preliminary form of the blood covenant." He claims, however, that the context in which the author imbedded these relics of an older ritual transforms their meaning. When these old ceremonies became part of^the new tradition, the new purpose altered their significance. The sharing of a communal

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meal seems, to Buber, the central Passover ritual; the people learn that through such simple an activity as eating they can create community. Moses "reintroduces the holy and ancient" ceremony of the sacramental meal both as a sociological institution uniting the people and as a sign of the new nature of the social unit, as a symbol of Israel's special characteristic: the consecration of life to a divine purpose. Since the covenant event transforms the people of Israel, Moses' new ritual of the covenant evokes that occasion and invites the Israelites to undergo such conversion anew. From this perspective the myth transforms a sociological ritual and a totemic symbol into an opportunity for personal conversion. Buber thinks that the blood ceremony as used in Exodus conveys a new idea: the ordinary human activity of eating acts as a communal sacrament. The normal human function of nourishment, undertaken in a distinctive ritual setting, changes "by the participation of the whole community to the level of an act of communion." Viewing the ritual from this perspective suggests that it works by engaging every community member in a common activity. The annual repetition of this ritual recreates that unifying spirit. The festival taking shape each year celebrates not "pious remembrance, but the ever-recurrent contemporaneousness of that which once befell." The feast of Passover evokes a continual reality: a community grows out of shared activity.49

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Buber's interpretation of the laws of Passover takes its symbols, rituals and myth as expressions of a deeper reality: an event in which the nation became self-conscious. Taken together, these symbols, rituals, and myth stimulate the performance of common actions by community members. The symbols evoke deep human emotions. The myth recalls how history shaped a common response to those emotions. The rituals offer a new opportunity for such shared acting. Unlike Reik, Buber refuses to translate different myths into coded references to a single psychological event. He takes each myth as a recollection of a different historical event; he interprets every ritual as an opportunity for a new historical event. Using this approach, Buber offers his own interpretation of the Sinaitic blood covenant.

BEYOND SOCIOLOGY: BUBER AND SMITH

Buber emphasizes the sociological function of Israel's rituals. So, too, does W. Robertson Smith. Smith, unlike Buber, claims that ancient Israel's blood rituals evoked a "magical" power. Rather than being understood on a realistic or empirical level, they operated on unseen, supernatural forces. By participating in the "blood feast," the Israelites shared in the life force of their deity. Buber agrees that Israel associated its birth as a nation with its relationship to God. He denies that

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this idea defies common sense. For Buber, "the current system of cause and effect becomes, as it were, transparent and permits a glimpse of the sphere in which a sole power, not restricted by any other, is at work." What appears to Smith as magic seems to Buber an expression by the people of Israel of how their deity encompassed all spheres of life. The rituals associated with Israel's exodus combine a respect for the historical and the natural: "What is shown us of nature is stamped by History" and while "Nature always points to History," "History always contains" elements of creation. Buber consistently refuses to admit magic into biblical thought.50 Smith's approach, from Buber's perspective, misses the essential meaning of Israel's evolutionary history. Not only did Moses' personal covenant experience become transformed into a social one; that social experience became the basis for a sense of universal mission. In the story of the covenant made at Sinai the people recorded still another transformational event: an event in which each person discovered not only a national destiny but also a task for humanity as a whole. Buber explains the covenant ritual at Sinai in Exodus 24 as testimony to a social, political, and religious transformation. Sometime in their history, according to Buber, the Israelites progressed from a state of chaotic and amorphous individualism to one of cultural self-consciousness; then, later, they changed and developed into a nation with a self-conscious political goal and

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purpose. They understood this progression in religious terms: only a relationship with God could have catalyzed such a momentous transformation. The people no longer represented separate individuals or even a cultural community. They now shared a sacred mission as partners with God in a divine program of world redemption. Buber describes how the people celebrated this new reality through a ritual, a "cult act" transformed into a "pre-state" ceremony. He interprets the symbolism of Sinai in terms of national, social, and personal obligation. God acts as a melekh, a king who establishes the goals, boundaries, and tasks appropriate for a nation. Israel acts as a people, a loyal citizenry that accepts the obligations imposed on it by legitimate leaders. Myth, as Buber understands it, records a primal discovery and offers that record as an invitation to its repetition. The account in Exodus 24, then, describes the memory on the basis of which Israel repeatedly entered into relationship with its God.51 This approach explains not only the significance of the specific symbols, rituals, and myths in each biblical passage; it also provides a rationale for the retention of all three. Each complex of symbol, myth, and ritual represents a stage in Israel's development. The circumcision ritual, combined with the myth of Moses' encounter with the deity and the blood symbolism, reflects a leader's experience of overcoming alienation through a sense of task. The myth of the Exodus, the ritual of

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the Passover, and the blood covenant of sacrifice in Egypt evoke the shared activities by which a community comes into being. Finally, the unique blood covenant of Sinai, its myth of covenant affirmation, and its national ritual record the dedication to task by which a nation became self-conscious. The three stories of covenantal ceremony in the Bible reflect three stages in ancient Israel's religious evolution. One myth celebrates a moment of discovery during which an individual intuits the demand given by a God who transcends personal desires. A second myth recalls the need for some mark of social or cultural identification, some tangible or concrete sign of belonging to a group. A final myth evokes the highest ideal: an egalitarian community united not by force or necessity but by dedication to a great purpose and goal. Like Smith and Reik, Buber sketches the evolution of a ritual. Unlike them, he considers that development motivated by religious growth, by the evolving spiritual consciousness of the Jewish people. Buber's analysis of the three blood rituals in Exodus reflects his view that ancient Israel developed its symbols, rituals, and myths to convey their reflection on an I-You event that shaped the nation. Together, these symbols, rituals and myths reflect an event that united and molded traditional rituals into a new synthesis that created a national identity that surpassed either individual experience

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or mere shared communal living. This synthesis recognized the human need for images and symbols but transcended that need by creating rituals, symbols and myths to reaffirm the kingship of the divine.52 Buber finds in Israel's religiousness a recognition of the forces working against the ideal of God's kingship and an antidote to them. The symbol of Moses himself reflects this recognition. Unlike either priest or prophet, he unites within himself all aspects of communal life. Called to realize "the unity of religious and social life in the community of Israel," Moses himself rises "above the compartmental system of typology."53 Different authors unravel the strands of the blood covenant, its myths, and rituals differently. Reik and Smith offer a simpler paradigm than Buber's but also explain fewer of the complexities of the text.

THE EXODUS TODAY

Beyond exegesis, however, each theorist suggests a modern significance to the biblical myth. Buber considers myth an invitation to modern response. As a myth, the story invites the people of Israel to follow the same path as did Moses: moving beyond human weakness, social necessity, and the class interests of competing social groups. Reik imagines myth reminding humanity of a single common guilt: the murder of the father as recreated in each

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person's psyche. Telling the myth enables moderns to cope with their own maturation process and their own sense of guilt. Smith takes an even more restricted view of the modern purpose of his analysis. He seeks to show how modern religious practice owes its form and nature to more primitive sources. Of these three goals— that of reconstructing and evoking a primal experience, that of revealing a primal psychological reality, and that of tracing the sources of modern practice— Buber's task is far more ambitious, complex, and sophisticated. The reader may wonder whether the biblical rituals or their myths effectively achieve the goal Buber assigns to them. Smith's theory of sociological function and Reik's of psychological origin are limited, and thus often more acceptable than Buber's Nevertheless, while Buber's expansive vision may leave readers with more doubts about his particular argument for particular rituals, his approach does offer a synthesis and explanation for the variety of myths, rituals, and symbols maintained in the text. Such an explanation at least points in a more productive direction than the reductionism of either Smith or Reik.

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NOTES 1.

Robert A. Segal, "In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth." Annals of Scholarship 1:1 (1980), p. 39; see his entire discussion of the "myth-ritualist" interpretation on pp. 39-43.

2.

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between thepsychic lives of savages and neurotics, trans. and intro. A. A. Brill (New York: Random House, 1946), p. 187.

3.

Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 129.

4.

See the discussion in both Theodor Reik, The Creation of Woman: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the Mvth of Eve (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), and his Mvth and Guilt: The Crime and Punishment of Mankind (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1957) .

5.

See Reik, The Creation of Woman, especially, pp. 24-31, 102-19; and Mvth and Guilt, passim.

6.

Benjamin Uffenheimer, "Myth and Reality in Ancient Israel," in S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Civilization (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986), pp. 136-67.

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7.

Martin Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 169.

8.

Martin Buber, Kingship of God, 3rd ed., trans. Richard Scheimann (New York: Harper, 1967), p. 15.

9.

Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem. trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1955), p. 13.

10. Buber, Kingship of God, p. 48. 11. Ibid., p . 53 .

12 . Ibid., p. 14. 13. Ibid., p. 27. 14. See Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Middle Years. 19231945 (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 13337. 15. Buber,

Kingship of God, p. 97.

16. Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, eds. and trans. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1952), p. 366. 17. Buber,

Kingship of God, pp. 136-62.

18. Ibid., pp. 121-35. 19. See the discussion in Steven T. Katz, Jewish Ideas and Concepts (New York: Schocken, 1977), pp. 156-62; compare my

230

THE EXODUS Covenant and Community in Modern Judaism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989) in which I compare Buber's view with those of other contemporary Jewish theologians such as Richard L. Rubenstein, Abraham Heschel, and Mordecai Kaplan.

20. See Michael Goldberg, Jews and Christians: Getting Our Story Straight (Nashville, Abingdon, 1985); compare Will Herberg's exploration of the existential implications of the Exodus, its association with covenant, its echoes of earlier biblical tales, and its meaning for modern Jews. Herberg, however, steadfastly claims that the Hebrew Bible emphasizes history, not myth. Although I have learned much from Herberg, and although my summary of the Exodus story draws on his writing, especially in Judaism and Modern Man: An Interpretation of Jewish Religion (New York: Harper, 1951), pp. 261-72, and his Faith Enacted as History: Essays in Biblical Theology, ed. and intro. Bernard W. Anderson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), pp. 32-42, my point of departure differs radically from his. 21.

W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions (New York: Schocken, 1972), p. vii.

2 2 . Ibid., p . 5 .

23 . Ibid., p . 19. 24. I b i d . ,

pp.

312-23.

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25. Ibid., pp. 157, 211, 318, 344, 417. 26. See Reik, The Creation of Woman especially pp. 11-13, 141-49; and Mvth and Guilt, pp. 46-79, 416-30. 27. See Theodor Reik, Mystery on the Mountain: The Drama of the Sinai Revelation (New York: Harper, 1959), especially pp. 87-96. 28.

Ibid.,pp. 140-49.

29.

Ibid.,pp. 16-18.

30 . Ibid., p . 90. 31. Ibid., p. 176. 32. Ibid., pp. 121, 91, 66-69, 157. 33. Ibid.. pp. 184-87. 34. Martin Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (New York: Harper, 1946), pp. 185-86. 35. Buber, 125. 36. 37.

Israel and the World, pp. 123,

Buber, Moses, pp. 37-38. Buber,Kingship of God, pp. 104-7; compare Moses, pp. 48-55, and The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle WittonDavies (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 27-30.

38. Buber,

M oses, pp.

44-45.

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39. Ibid., p . 47. 40. Buber,

Moses, p. 200.

41. Ibid., pp. 18-19. 42. See Buber, Moses, pp. 121-35. 43. 44.

Ibid.. pp. 56-59. See ibid., pp. 65-66; The Prophetic Faith, pp. 5-6.

45. See Martin Buber, On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1968), pp. 86-87; On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), p. 139. 46.

Buber, Israel

and the World, p. 186.

47.

Martin Buber,Pointing the Wav, ed. and trans. Maurice S. Friedman (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 137, 217.

48.

See John van Seters, "The Place of the Yahwist in the History of Passover and Massot," Zeitschrift Fur Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 95 (1983): 167-82; "The Plagues of Egypt: Ancient Tradition or Literary Invention?" Zeitschrift Fur Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 98 (1986): 31-39.

49. Ibid., pp. 70-73. 50. B u b er,

M oses, pp.

74-79.

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51. Ibid.. pp. 114-15; compare Kingship of God, pp. 121-35, 200-3, notes 1-22 (with explicit references to W. Robertson Smith in notes 3, 8, 22). 52. Buber, Moses, pp. 147-61; see especially the statement on p. 150, repeated on p. 156 about Moses' overwhelming "moment" in which the new cult come into existence. 53. Ibid., p. 186; compare pp. 182-90.

Chapter 6

Buber And Hasidic Myth

HASIDISM IN JUDAISM

While Buber shares his interest in the Hebrew Bible with several theorists of myth, his investigation of the seventeenth century Jewish mystical movement hasidism represents a pioneering effort in elucidating an obscure mythic tradition. Hasidism arose as a specific response to challenges faced by Jews in the modern world. The changes of modernity, beginning with thinkers such as Spinoza and Voltaire and continuing through the French Revolution and the political reaction to it, brought about two great movements in Jewish religious life: that of the haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, which sought to incorporate modern science, philosophy, and nationalism into Judaism, and that of hasidism, a pietistic movement that popularized personal devotion, enthusiastic worship, and mystical reflections.!

235

236 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH Traditionally, scholars trace hasidism back to Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, called the Baal Shem Tov, an eighteenth century Jewish leader in Poland known mostly from writings collected by disciples and late legends. Rabbinical Jewish leaders, known as mitnaqdim, or opposers, resented the popular approach of hasidism. These leaders utilized the weak weapons they still possessed— namely, moral argument, the ecclesiastical ban, and ostracism— to discredit the new movement. These weapons failed to attain their ends since rabbinic leaders lacked the political or social power either to enforce the ban or to impose moral sanctions on those who disobeyed them. Thus hasidism grew in popular appeal, not the least because it employed new kinds of religious propaganda such as stories, witty sayings, and new rituals. The Jewish community split between those supporting and those opposing the new movement. Although at first that division mirrored class tension, the Rabbi Dov Baer, who succeeded the Baal Shem Tov, emphasized the elitist and intellectual approach of the rabbinic tradition. He emphasized ecstatic worship, deep study of traditional Jewish lore, and creative exegesis of traditional texts— thus combining the forms of rabbinic religion with the new religious expression that had popularized the movement. The hasidic leader, the zaddik, formed a charismatic center for hasidism. Both the Baal Shem Tov and Dov Baer emphasized the importance of the zaddik for the welfare of his community. Because the zaddik

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understood the mysterious powers of divinity in the world, he could guide each of his followers on the right path of religious life. As the movement grew, more and more leaders created their own independent spheres of influence. Rivalries divided one hasidic group from another. One faction, begun by Shneur Zalman of Ladi (1746-1812), synthesized mystical with rabbinic learning. By the nineteenth century, hasidism had united with rabbinical Judaism in a stand against the threat of modernity and the Enlightenment. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel suggests that the hasidic teachers revived an audacious Jewish impudence that had fallen into disrepute: they claimed that the leader intervenes with heaven for the sake of his followers. Hasidic teaching focuses again and again on the ability of the zaddik to manipulate heavenly powers for earthly purposes.2 One of the most exceptional talents of the zaddik lay in his ability to transform the raw material of daily life into spiritual substance. Jewish mystics both before and after the hasidim sought to redeem this fallen world. According to these mystics, the creation of the world precipitated a crisis during which divine sparks of holiness were exiled in bodily existence. These holy sparks, trapped in corporeal matter, require uplifting; only when all sparks return to their heavenly source will redemption occur. A complex system of correspondences between human deeds and supernal reactions helped

238 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH mystics navigate between the mundane and celestial realms. Hasidism accepted this theory and emphasized the mundane aspects of the human task. Human duty lies in redeeming just those material and corporeal elements that confront each person. The zaddik performs this duty through a devotional attachment to God, called in Hebrew devekut. They achieved this cleaving to God while accomplishing the simplest and most ordinary tasks. While the zaddik provides the clearest model of such devotion, every Jew must seek to fulfill this duty, at least by appealing to a zaddik for help. The redemption of the ordinary, daily experiences of every person moves beyond the hasidic leader to the individual hasidim and their duties before God.3 Hasidism believes that sanctifying everyday experiences brings cosmic redemption. Before the rise of hasidism, Jewry erupted into two major messianic movements: that of Sabbetai Zevi and that of Jacob Frank. Jews responded to the call of a messiah who promised them new hope in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars debate how directly hasidism responds to these two movements. Certainly stories about the leaders of hasidism make reference to both messianic figures. Many commentators argue that hasidism has "neutralized" the messianic spirit evident in earlier Jewish sectarian groups. Hasidic writings still hope passionately for a messianic fulfillment: they exalt the expectation of a return to the Land of Israel and of the liberation of the Jewish

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239

people from its exile. Nevertheless, they focus on the incremental nature of the redemption and the ordinary tasks rather than the extraordinary deeds that can hasten its coming. Hasidism preserves messianic longing but deprives it of the destructive power that Sabbetianism and Frankism exerted on the Jewish people.4 Buber as a theorist of myth contributes more than either a general theory or new insights to a well-known mythical tradition. He applies his theory of myth to a relatively ignored tradition to illuminate human mythology generally. Buber's exegesis of hasidic myth focuses on these three characteristics of hasidism: the centrality of the zaddik, the hallowing of everyday life, and the neutralization of messianism.

BUBER AND THE HASIDIC STORY

Most scholars see the centrality of the zaddik as the most characteristic aspect of hasidism. Buber attributes the vitality of myth in hasidic stories to the I-You relationship between a zaddik and his disciples. Hasidic stories about the zaddik point to the purpose of human existence: the meeting of an I and a You. Myth, Buber comments, "conveys the meaning of life" by narrating an incident and thus evokes the meaning of life generally through presenting a particular person in life. Buber claims that hasidic myth accurately reports

240 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH meetings between people that attest to life's significance. These myths show how a true leader helps his followers enter into authentic human relationships. Buber argues for the centrality of the zaddik as a defining feature of hasidism from its very beginning. The zaddik helps each hasid grow into a meeting with others. The hasid experiences this vitalization of his potential as miraculous and therefore tells stories about the zaddik as miracle worker.5 Hasidic legend offers these myths in its anecdotes about the leaders of its movement and their miracles. Buber's explication of these stories continually shows how the zaddik provides direction and purpose for the hasidim. Hasidic myth, then, acts as a positive force advocating human choosing. By contrast, Buber suggested that myth as used by messianic pretenders such as Sabbetai Zevi and Jacob Frank prevents true choosing. Such leaders merely "play" with myth and thus fail to suggest how myth reflects a genuine meeting between people.6 He thereby distinguishes between valuable and dangerous uses of myth.

HASIDISM IN MODERN JUDAISM

This difference between the hasidic use of myth and its use in other Jewish movements suggests to Buber how myth sometimes seeks to replace religion. While religion depends on myth, myth may also

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defeat religion by substituting the image pointing to a lived experience for that experience.7 The abuse of myth, however, can lead to an equally disastrous reaction. When leaders separate theory from practice or reject imagination and focus purely on thought and reason, they fall prey to selfaggrandizement and spiritual isolation.8 Buber considers this double danger not only illustrative of hasidism but also typical of a continuing tension within Jewish religion. Judaism as a whole reflects a struggle between myth, which points to spontaneous events, and religion, which limits and confines response to appropriate times and places. While it might appear that religion wins its battle against myth and converts it to a static symbol, substituting manipulation for dialogue, Buber rejects this conclusion. Hasidic myth represents one in a continuing series of victories for the mythic impulse in Judaism.9 Hasidic myth arises in response to the myth of earlier Jewish mysticism, myth that had been converted into static religion by various messianic movements and eschatological philosophies. It replaces such philosophy with a model of human reciprocity that for Buber remains true to biblical Judaism and its mythic tradition— the tradition that shapes Jewish religiosity at its best. Hasidic myth liberates kabbalistic myth and returns it to its pristine purity.10 Buber argues that hasidism achieves this return because it remembers the importance of concrete events of daily life. Hasidic myth points to a relationship that empowers

242 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH the ordinary Jew. The zaddik's power enables a hasid to emulate the master's ability to transform the mundane into the supernal. Myth testifies to the transformational power of I-You relationship, together with the sense of direction it provides. Hasidic stories emphasize daily activities because those activities express mythically the truth that human meeting occurs through everyday life. While the content of stories often appears to be supernatural, Buber attributes this characteristic to mythic form. Since people experience their daily events as miracles, they tell them using superlative language. Despite this language, Buber claims, legendary anecdotes narrate commonplace events perceived as miraculous. His own writings, he tells his readers, seek to preserve both the sense of miracle and the corporeal basis for the story.11 Buber recognizes that any event might become the kernel of a miracle tale. The superficial narrative merely carries the mythic intention and does not exhaust it. Myth, some might argue, substitutes supernaturalism for empirical studies and causal logic. Buber disagrees: Jewish myth describes the normal causal experiences but perceives them as "supracausally meaningful." An empirical description of events may accurately catalogue what happened but overlooks its true significance. Telling a story in a purely empirical way obscures its truth, and therefore "the Jew of antiquity cannot tell a story in any other way than mythically."12

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243

Accurate presentation of what occurs depends upon inclusion of its mythic component. As Buber interprets it, the true lesson of hasidic myth— that even the simple Jew had a concrete task to perform— represents another reflection of I-You relationship. The emphasis on the everyday suggests that religious life requires community, not isolation. While the zaddik aids in bringing redemption, he cannot achieve it alone. The stories of the zaddik merely point to a potential within the hasid. They do not show the zaddik effecting redemption alone. Buber summarizes the hasidic teaching on redeeming the world as the view that "each man can work on its redemption but none can effect it."13 This view of the messianic teaching of the zaddik provides a key to the mythic veracity of hasidic stories. Buber affirms the mythic vitality of stories which maintain a real dialogue between God and humanity. In later hasidism, however, the zaddik became more and more estranged from his hasidim. As that happened, the stories obscured the line dividing the human leader and the divine leader. The zaddik, like Sabbetai Zevi and Jacob Frank, identifies himself with God and through that identification tries to hasten the redemption of the world. Just as God includes within the divine divinity both good and evil, male and female, so the zaddik unifies all within himself and "redeems" evil by participating in it. The messianic impulse leads to a sympathetic magic applied by a mystic who joins himself

244 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH with evil, thereby hoping to influence God to do the same. Buber feels that transforming the likeness between the divine and the human into "an essential identity" threatens the basic affirmation of God's "unconditional superiority." The search for redemption, when carried out by theurgic attempts, or attempts seeking a magical effect by imitating the object to be manipulated, seek to force God to hasten the time of salvation, leads to a radical emphasis on human power. Such an emphasis undermines the truth of myth, a truth that requires dialogue with divinity rather than its manipulation.14 Buber shows how hasidic stories of redemption avoid this temptation to magic. He acknowledges their messianic and redemptive intention but explains their meaning as myths reporting an event of genuine meeting. When stories focus on redemption, they point to the human part in the messianic task. Hasidism reaffirms a traditional Jewish emphasis on the importance of each person's deeds. The hasidic story thereby elaborates "the traditional belief that God wants to win through man the world created by him."15 Understood mythically, the stories respond to the reality of I-You meeting, in which each partner finds self-confirmation. Hasidic stories testify to events in which human beings recognized, with surprise, their own power. While hasidism produced a variegated literature, its stories represent a unique

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contribution to Jewish literature.16 Buber concentrates on these stories because he finds them peculiarly important in the modern world. He claims that they speak with particular relevance today. Modern Jews, like those in the seventeenth century, need reassurance of their own potential. Hasidic stories respond to the modern crisis of self-confidence by providing a dramatic personal example of human achievement. They perform a mythic function because they indicate an event in which people, through relationship to others, make a difference in the world.17 Contemporary scholarship often debates whether hasidic legends actually reveal a self-conscious literary intention or merely reflect folk beliefs. Certainly the late flowering of hasidic writings such as the tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav and the Hebrew version of the stories about the Baal Shem Tov bear the marks of literary sophistication.18 Buber finds such debate irrelevant because even late myths point both back to a meeting experienced as a miracle and forward to new meetings thus being "a help for our concrete life."19

BUBER'S CHANGING VIEWS OF HASIDISM

Buber's own understanding of hasidism developed as he himself changed from being fascinated with the occult and mysterious to an engagement with "I-You" reality. Curiously, Buber's own struggle with

24 6 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH language and his efforts at expressing Jewish myth seem a mirror image of the development occurring within hasidism itself. Hasidism often confused myth with religion: it was most revolutionary when it reintroduced spontaneous myth into the structures of Judaism. Beginning as a revival of obscured aspects of Jewish religiosity, it ended by capitulating to the formal rabbinic religion it had once challenged. Buber's development, working in an opposite direction, began as a Westernized attempt to create a modern form for the hasidic myth and ended by allowing mythic truth to speak for itself unadorned by artificial artistry. He retains his Western perspective and admits that hasidic tales often appear incredible. While recognizing that some parts of the narrative and some narratives in their entirety strain belief, he still notes that some events took place "but were apparent only to the gaze of fervor" and that others "cannot have happened and could not have happened in the way that they are told." This impossibility, however, applies only to the description of external occurrences.20 The true event for Buber occurs as a human meeting of dialogue, and he claims that hasidic myth points directly back to such an event. Buber finds confirmation of this view within the hasidic tales themselves. They, too, testify to their mythic significance even while remaining on a more mundane level. Maurice Friedman characterizes Buber's growing understanding of myth as a growing

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sensitivity to "the unique event responded to with one's whole being."21 This statement recognizes an important part of Buber's approach to hasidism. Buber considers hasidic stories more than a fascinating relic from the Jewish past. He presents their modern relevance as part of his own message. He describes his function as that of a "lateborn interpreter" who explains for others the myth that "has entered into the lived life of seven generations."22 He serves this function by drawing attention to the event at the heart of every hasidic tale. He challenges readers to see that the story uses exaggerated language to express an overwhelming experience. The story may seem fantastic. It only seems so because the author tries to "outstrip all imagination." The superlative and supernatural elements of hasidic tales disguise the factual events they describe, events that Buber understands as occurring when two persons meet as an "I" and a "Thou."23 Buber's explanation of why Rabbi Israel, the founder of hasidism, took the name of the Baal Shem Tov emphasizes this mythic imagination as a contrast to previous Jewish mystical leaders. Buber focuses on the personality of Rabbi Israel as an example of a modern human being, of "personal wholeness which leads to the spontaneous response rather than to conscious imitation."24 The Baal Shem Tov treated disciples as human beings— teaching, healing, and helping them develop as persons, not merely offering them magical wonders. Buber focuses on the name

248 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH given this leader, a name that can be translated in one of three ways. The term "Baal Shem" means, literally, "Master of the Name." Used of miracle workers, it implies a magical mastery of certain demonic powers who must serve those who know their names. Many such magicians sprung up during the time of the rise of hasidism. Rabbi Israel, one might assume, followed in this tradition. Only he possessed a particularly powerful name: the "Shem Tov" or the "Good Name"— that of the divinity itself. Another way of interpreting the title, however, applies the adjective "good" not to the name but to the man: he was a "good" Baal Shem, a wonder worker who acted for the benefit of his followers. A final interpretation, however, appeals more to Buber. The term "shem tov" by itself may be translated as "good repute." The name Baal Shem Tov refers to a person of good reputation. Rabbi Israel possessed a good name of his own; his power stemmed from his personality.25 Buber points to a famous anecdote to support this contention. One of those who opposed hasidism did so out of antagonism to magic. He struggled against the use of amulets and magical instruments designed to coerce the supernal world. When confronted by an amulet of the Baal Shem Tov, he angrily tore it apart. Yet instead of finding either a demonic name or a heavenly name inscribed on it, he found the name Rabbi Israel the son of Sarah. The Baal Shem Tov's healing power came from his

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personal relationship with those needing help. Buber draws a conclusion from this story about the Baal Shem's power of healing: it took place because of a trusting personal relation. The amulet was not magic it was "nothing but a sign and pledge of the personal bond between the helper and the one who is given help, a bond based on trust."26

Hasidic sources reveal a different meaning. According to them, the Besht continues a tradition of his predecessors. The variant forms of this story show that at times it emphasizes the Besht's power of magical coercion and his skill at defeating others who practiced similar arts. Perhaps most startling of all, however, is the variant that claims that the Besht discovered this mode of amulet writing from one of his predecessors: Rabbi Naftali HaCohen. The Besht hears that Rabbi Naftali's amulets have great power. He inspects them and finds that they contain only Rabbi Naftali's name. At that point the Besht decides to imitate this practice. Buber misrepresents the historical continuity of the Besht and the other practical magicians of his time.27 Such a criticism, however, misses Buber's main intention. Buber invites readers to share the insights of hasidism so that they, too, can build a life on trust and personal living. He tells the stories of the Besht to communicate an event faithfully, not a historical reality. Buber writes of his own experience, "I had found the true faithfulness more adequately than the direct

25 0 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH

disciples, I received and completed the task, a late messenger in a foreign realm."28 Buber's renditions faithfully reflect the mythic event: a meeting of human beings enabled by the zaddik. Walter Kaufmann shows more sensitivity to Buber's own intention when he suggests that "what we hear as we read is what Buber heard."29 Buber's telling of hasidic stories succeed because it flows from his insistent honesty, an honesty that the direct disciples, in their zealousness, set aside in favor of retaining a static symbol of their master's teachings.

EXAMPLES OF HASIDIC MYTH The best illustrations of how Buber applies his theory of myth to hasidic tales come from his explicit exposition of texts rather than in his anthologies of tales. He uses a hasidic story as the point of departure for explaining the meaning of myth. His anthologies of hasidic tales offer a rich resource of myths (even if Buber sometimes calls them legends) on which he can draw in his more analytic writings. Buber reflects on his personal reaction to the stories, their relationship to other stories in world literature, and their importance as myth. His connected series of essays, "The Way of Man according to the Teachings of Hasidism," provides clear examples of Buber's method. In each of seven chapters he begins with a legend,

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expounds its meaning as a reflection of IYou relationship, and supplements the legend with corroborating evidence.30 Buber reports on one tale that bothered him when he first heard it and that only gradually took on positive significance. A disciple of the hasidic teacher, the Seer of Lublin, once took upon himself a week of fasting to teach himself discipline. At the end of his self-imposed period of discipline he went to meet the Seer at the house of study. On his way, however, he passed a well of water. An overwhelming thirst assailed him. Try as he would, he could not overcome the temptation. He went to the well, about to break his fast. At the last moment he thought to himself, "Should I now lose everything for which I have labored all week?" He strengthened his resolve and left the well. As he left, however, he felt a swelling of pride, a sense of satisfaction at having resisted temptation. Sensing this impulse, the disciple changed his mind and returned to the well. Certainly the sin of pride would outweigh any gain that he had attained through fasting. Determined to break his pride, the disciple returned to the well of water and dipped the ladle into the bucket. No sooner had the fresh water come out of the well, however, than the disciple lost all desire to drink. He returned the ladle, still filled to the brim, back to the well and continued on his way to his master. The master looked at the disciple, shook his head sadly, and declared, "Patchwork."31

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Buber's interpretive essay recalls how he once wondered at the harshness of the master's response. The disciple's intentions in each case seemed laudable. Learning discipline, breaking the back of pride, responding to the call of the situation at hand— all appear valuable tasks. Reflecting on the Seer's rebuke, however, Buber remarks that he realized that the essential task lies behind each of these individual ones. The master sought to teach the disciple the secret of devekut, of cleaving to God while performing mundane actions. That secret lies less in the particular deeds done than in the unified intention motivating any act. The Seer tried to inculcate a "unity of the soul," a unity that the disciple's patchwork behavior ripped apart. Buber comments that such unification of the self and intention must occur before action rather than in the midst of it. Why, however, did the Seer need to teach the disciple this lesson in so dramatic and painful a way? Buber concludes that only this confrontation would instruct the disciple both in the ideal to be pursued and in the possibility of attaining that ideal. The disciple had experienced failure after failure. What else could he conclude than that he had been programmed to fail? Through the human contact of the Seer's rebuke the disciple discovered his own potential. The Seer communicated a disappointment that also conveyed an expectation: the Seer declared the disciple's work "patchwork" because he knew that the disciple could achieve a unified soul. Through this meeting with the Seer

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the disciple learned that "the man with the divided, complicated, contradictory soul is not helpless." The story points to the value of a leader who refuses to accept compromise and therefore teaches his followers their unsuspected abilities.32 Taken as a historical anecdote, the story is puzzling. When Buber read the story only at its literal level, he could not understand the master's response to the disciple. Then he looked more deeply. He found the myth of I-You relationship at the heart of the tale. The master teaches the student that every meeting, even one as painful as a rebuke, may initiate the same reaction, entering into I-You meeting. Teaching through the example of a relationship itself enabled the student to know the possibility of personal unification, of transcending the multiplicity of the phenomenal world through moving beyond I-It manipulation to I-You living. What the student failed to accomplish in his own patchwork, the master teaches through an apparent rebuke. Because Buber sees I-You meeting as the true significance of the hasidic concept of devekut, he can decode the Seer's response to his pupil in terms of this basic reality. Understood that way, the story mythically evokes the possibility of human meeting. Applying his view of myth to the story, Buber translates the Seer's rebuke into an existential meeting. The tale recalls that meeting and its consequences and relates them in terms that, however cruel, have the power to reawaken such meeting once again by

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those who read its myth truly. The word here, according to Buber, represents a call to action. Buber sees the actions demanded as personal and moral. The disciple learns to unite his life rather than merely practice religious disciplines. This emphasis on personal and moral response leads Buber to deemphasize traditional Jewish law and practice. Thus Buber tells of a hasidic master who once opened the prayerbook of Isaac Luria during the worship of the Days of Awe but who never glanced inside it. When questioned by his disciples, he narrated a tale about the Baal Shem Tov. Once a poor farmer and his family served a great Christian lord. Times became hard, and the farmer and his wife both died, leaving their young son, Nahum, an orphan. Raised by Christians, the boy knew nothing of Judaism. Once, however, exploring his adopted home, he came across the possession which his parents had left behind: a prayershawl, prayer bands, and a heavy prayerbook. Day after day, Buber relates, the boy would secretly go to that room and gaze at the letters in the book "until the eyes of his mother emerged." When the High Holy Days arrived, the boy felt drawn to the synagogue and learned that the day was holy. Aware that he could not pray himself, the boy "took his mother's book, laid it on the desk," and declared, "I do not know what to pray ... but here, Lord of the world, you have the whole prayerbook." No one knew what to make of that event, but "the BaalShem knew of this happening and he spoke of the prayer with great joy." After the

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holiday he taught the boy "the pure and blessed truth."33 The story emphasizes the importance of intention rather than traditional practice. Buber acknowledges the importance of deeds but does so in a non-traditional way. He tells how Rabbi Hayyim of Zans complained to Rabbi Eliezer that "My hair and beard have grown white, and I have not yet atoned." Rabbi Eliezer responded, "You are thinking only of yourself— start thinking of the world." Buber's essay comments that this anecdote teaches the necessity of moving beyond the self and contrasts this approach to that of Christianity. The Jew must be preoccupied with the welfare of the world; personal salvation is not the highest aim but merely a tool by which humanity helps God's creation become "the kingdom of God." The story emphasizes an important aspect of Buber's view of hasidism. Hasidic messianism focus attention on improving the world rather than on improving the self.34 The theme of redeeming the world without becoming self-absorbed plays an essential role in Buber's exposition of hasidism. The story at hand, however, involves more than just this idea. The tale evokes a human meeting. Rabbi Hayyim tortures himself about his lack of atonement. Finally, he gathers enough courage to approach Rabbi Eliezer and, as in the previous tale, receives what can only be considered a rebuke. Buber's ability to move beyond this rebuke to an exploration of messianism and the need to redeem the world derives from his reading of the tale as a myth. Between

256 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH the story itself and Buber's exegesis lies its mythical content. The story, read as myth, reflects an event occurring between Rabbi Hayyim and Rabbi Eliezer. In their meeting Rabbi Hayyim discovered the purpose of his life, the meaning of his soul searching. The story recasts that experience into a story about two men confiding their dearest secrets to each other. Buber intuits this mythical basis in the tale. Rabbi Eliezer calls Rabbi Hayyim "my friend," a term that shows that human companionship provides life's meaning. This response enables his friend to discover that repentance points beyond itself to an act performed for the good of the world as a whole. Through his meeting with Rabbi Eliezer Rabbi Hayyim realized that he had been wasting his "soulpower" on self-reproach when he should have used it to find "a way of fulfillment of the particular task for which he, this particular man, has been destined by God."35 God's concern with the world becomes each person's concern to fulfill a particular duty toward the world. The myth tells this as a story. Hasidic teaching couches this idea in philosophical language. Buber moves from the story back to the myth and presents a new teaching couched in his I-You language about redemption in response to the event. Buber takes a simple story that glorifies ignorant prayer and develops it into a commentary on human life. A person begins as an orphan and stranger: we do not know our parents or our tradition. Yet we

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do find relics of it here and there. The words of those relics loom before us as an abyss. We do not understand them; we grapple with tradition but cannot comprehend it. If we grapple honestly, good will come even of our ignorance. The boy who responded to the power of the letters and admitted his lack of knowledge finally deserved the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. Like the boy, every Jew seems to journey toward his original purpose. Every Jew faces the task of converting the evil and tragedy of his situation into the basis of good and human growth. The story in Buber's version moves beyond the experience of Jews in particular to encompass every human story. While in its earliest form the story functioned as part of hasidic polemic against the tyranny of an intellectual elite, for Buber it reveals the deepest human struggle. The audience of this tale, whether Jewish or not, recognizes the potential locked within the "evil" and problematic aspects of life. Ignorance may seem a sin, but it can become a blessing; human beings seek the relics of their identity to derive some meaning from their existence. The relics provide more than meaning; they also offer a sense of direction. That direction, once discovered, leads to greater knowledge, unlocking potential not even suspected before. The story awakens the thirst for realizing one's possibilities in the world by its mythic force. Buber presents a modern audience with an opportunity to discover the message of

258 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH hasidic truth: its testimony about I-You meeting and its invitation to similar meetings in human life today. Buber's anthologies of hasidic stories narrate tales so that readers may respond to their meaning. They offer selections from legendary anecdotes that directly addressed Buber, that are written in such a way that they also address his audience, and that provide introductory interpretations to open the texts for readers so that they may respond spontaneously to them. One story relates how Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of Habad hasidism, confronted a skeptical non-Jew.36 The tale explains that the opponents of the hasidim, the Mitnagdim, reported the Rabbi to the Russian authorities. Their machinations succeeded in having the hasidic leader imprisoned. The jailer, a deeply religious non-Jew, took advantage of the presence of this holy man to begin a theological discussion. In the midst of the discussion the jailer demanded of the Rabbi an explanation of a puzzling passage in Genesis 3. After Adam and Eve have disobeyed God and eaten from the forbidden fruit, they hear God walking in the garden. Frightened, they hide themselves. God calls out to the man, "Man, where are you?" The jailer wonders why God, whose omniscience should include the knowledge of where the humans have hidden, needs to ask that question. The Alter Rebbe, as the hasidim call Shneur Zalman, gives an answer directed to the personal life of the jailer: God determines a life pattern for each person. Again and again, the deity calls out to that person: you have

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lived just so many years; where are you on the road that I have set for you; how much have you accomplished so far toward the goal that I have established for your life? According to the tale, the Rebbe mentioned the exact age of the jailer, who trembled at these words. Taken at face value, the story tells a historical anecdote: how the hasidic master defeated a rival in theological debate. Buber recognizes this style of anecdote as an ancient genre going back to rabbinic literature. He emphasizes, however, that the hasidic version transforms the basic genre. The Alter Rebbe refuses to be drawn into a purely intellectual discussion and converts it into a conversation about how one should live and whether a person has succeeded in fulfilling life's tasks. While the jailer addresses Rabbi Zalman with theological, abstract questions, the founder of Habad responds with direct, personal answers. Thus Buber comments: "An impersonal question which, however seriously it may be meant in the present instance, is in fact no genuine question but merely a form of controversy, calls forth a personal reply or, rather, a personal admonition in lieu of a reply."37 Buber suggests throughout his analysis of this story that its content lies in this personal admonition: human beings must begin by analyzing where they are and how far they have come on the road allotted to them. The tale addresses each person, just as the Alter Rebbe addressed the jailer and demands self-searching personal introspection.

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Although the story of the Alter Rebbe makes explicit reference to the divine, Buber sometimes indicates a more subtle religiosity in hasidic myth. Hasidic stories present variations on traditional religious themes that point toward the I-You meeting they intend to celebrate. Thus Buber characterizes the hasidic master, Rabbi Zushya, by the general category of the "holy fool," known throughout popular religious literature. At the same time Buber stresses the peculiar trait of Zushya as "separate but not separated" from other people and examines his characteristic love of others.38 Such introductory words point the reader toward Zushya's personality, toward the human being at the heart of the myth. The introduction, however, does not illustrate Buber's own responsive reaction to the myth that addresses him. Buber's exposition of hasidic myth takes this extra step. When explaining the Besht's ideal of a zaddik who fulfills the command to love of others, the command to love the neighbor as the self, Buber refers to Zushya. According to the legend Buber relates, Zushya once shamed a sinner in the presence of his teacher. The teacher thereupon "blessed" Zushya with the ability to see either only the good in all people or the sins of others as his own. In the context of Buber's argument this illustration points to the way teachers inculcate the true love. By taking on themselves the sins of others, the leaders unify the human community. In this way, Buber comments, the hasidic saying supplies "what is lacking" in other

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traditions: one must include the other in the unity; then one has a good influence on him. People today can learn from this lesson. They will recognize their neighbor's needs and be able to love their neighbor when they can emulate Zushya and include the neighbor in a unity of meeting.39 Buber insists that this emulation can occur only through a human relationship and not through thought alone. The hasidic myth transmits more than a mere message. It also evokes the core event that stimulated the message. Love of neighbor goes back to a human meeting that enabled Zushya to love his neighbor. Buber's exposition of the story of Zushya's ability to see only the good in a sinner connects his ability to identify himself with sinners to his own lack of compassion. Tracing the story back to its mythic roots means looking for the IYou meeting it reflects. Zushya learned from his teacher that when an I and a You meet, they share responsibility and blame. The story, then, has mythical significance because it evokes an event by which Zushya discovered the true meaning of love.

262 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH NOTES 1.

See Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985); the pioneering work of Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1946) remains a valuable resource.

2.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Passion for Truth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), pp. 69-72; compare Samuel H. Dresner, The Zaddik (New York: Abelard Schuman, 1960) .

3.

See Gershom G. Scholem, "Devekut, or Communion with God," in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, trans. Michael A. Meyer (New York: Schocken, 1971), pp. 203-27.

4.

See the discussion throughout Scholem.

5.

See Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), pp. 5-6; see Buber's Hebrew version, Or HaGanuz (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1957), and The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), pp. 27-28.

6.

Buber, Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 34.

BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH 7.

Ibid.,

8.

Ibid., pp. 63, 434.

9.

Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1955), p. 11.

2 63

pp. 50-54, 153.

10. See Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Later Years, 19451964 (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 58, 283. 11. Buber, The Early Masters, pp. vi-ix. 12. Martin Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), pp. 104-6. 13. Martin Buber, "Replies to My Critics," in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII, (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1967), p. 739. 14. Buber, Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 236. 15 . Ibid., p . 50. 16. See Joseph Dan, The Hasidic Story— Its History and Development [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975). 17. Buber, Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, pp. 42-45.

264 BUBER AND HASIDIC MYTH 18. See Yoav Elstein, Maaseh Hoshev; Studies in Hasidic Tales [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: 1983), pp. 63-125; compare the writings of Joseph Dan on hasidic and Kabbalistic story in his two works, The Hasidic Story and The Hebrew Story in the Middle Ages [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974). 19. Buber, Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 71. 20. Buber, The Early Masters,

p. 1.

21. Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Early Years, 1878-1923 (New York: Dutton, 1983), p. 415. 22. Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), p. 41. 23. Ibid., p. 33; compare Buber, Between Man and Man. trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Maurice Friedman (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 203. 24. Friedman, The Early Years, p. 120. 25. Buber, The Early Masters, 26. Ibid.,

pp. 11-12.

p. 13.

27. See the variants collected in Israel Jacob Klapholtz, All the Stories of the BESHT [Hebrew] I (Bnai Berak: Mishor, 1989), pp. 236-38.

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28. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, pp. 6162. 29. Walter Kaufmann, "Buber's Religious Significance," in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII. (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1967), p. 677. 30. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, pp. 123' 76. 31. Ibid., pp. 146-51. 32. Ibid.. p. 149. 33. Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, pp. 92-97. 34. Ibid., pp. 162-67. 35. Ibid., pp. 163-64. 36. See Ibid., pp. 130-34. 37 . Ibid., p. 132. 38. See Buber, The Early Masters, pp. 26-27; my rendering based on the Hebrew in Or HaGanuz differs from Olga Marx's translation that says "Zushya does not sequester himself; he is only detached." 39. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, pp. 25354.

Chapter 7

Myth as Language

SILENCE AND SPEECH IN HASIDIC MYTH

Understanding Buber's approach to hasidic legend as an application of his theory of myth puts in perspective the criticisms often brought against him as an interpreter of hasidism. Other scholars tend to approach hasidism in a reverse manner from Buber. They look at the particular case of hasidism as an illustration of a previously held general theory. Gershom Scholem, the foremost modern scholar of Jewish mysticism, studies hasidism as another example of Jewish mysticism, comparable with earlier forms of Jewish mystical or gnostic religion.1 Scholem evolves a general theory of mysticism. He explores how different Jewish movements exemplify this theory, how mystical symbols, rituals, and philosophies develop in specific historical contexts. Scholem, as much as Buber, seeks to universalize his discoveries. He 267

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investigates the sociological and psychological dynamics of mystical thinking and applies these general theories to the specifics of Jewish mysticism, including that of hasidism. Scholem attacks Buber for relying on hasidic stories but ignoring the esoteric teaching informing them.2 Scholem claims to have discovered several flaws in Buber's method. First, by de­ emphasizing the teachings that even Buber admits draw heavily on pre-hasidic kabbalah, Scholem charges that Buber overlooks hasidism's continuity with Jewish gnosticism. Buber transforms hasidism into an existentialist theology only by artificially severing its connection with the magical tradition at its roots. Second, Scholem charges, Buber's concentration on the story substitutes evidence from a later period for more original testimony. Since the stories Buber analyzes all come from at least fifty years after the beginning of hasidism, Scholem claims that they cannot represent the original hasidic tradition. Third, Buber, according to Scholem, imposes a modern and alien meaning to the texts he studies, suggesting that his view of hasidism is "tied to assumptions that derive from his own philosophy of religious anarchism and existentialism," lacking any basis in the texts themselves.3 Finally, Scholem objects to Buber's universalization of hasidic religiousness as a general example of I-You meeting. He insists on distinguishing between the a specific religious tradition and the category in which it falls. These criticisms,

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however, need to be understood within the context of a deeper division between Scholem and Buber: their different views of language and silence. A popular theory, recently challenged by Joseph Dan, a contemporary scholar of Jewish mysticism and a disciple of Gershom Scholem, traces the evolution of hasidism as a rapid progression from early vitality to degeneration. According to this view, hasidim begins with the charismatic message of Israel Baal Shem Tov in the early eighteenth century and then deteriorates into a nearly idolatrous reverence for the hasidic masters, the zaddikim, by the end of the nineteenth century.4 While Martin Buber questions some tenets of this theory, he accepts the thesis of a general, arc-like trajectory in its development. For example, he hails Rabbi Mendel of Vorki for developing the art of silence, an art Buber considers appropriate for Rabbi Mendel's age of hasidism's decline. Early hasidism had kept words alive, had vitalized religious language. In its stage of deterioration, however, hasidism lacked that power of invigoration. Words became barriers to the life proclaimed by hasidic leaders: "The time for words is past," Buber comments, "It has become late."5 While Buber lauds Rabbi Mendel for understanding the needs of his age, he castigates other zaddikim who fail to recognize the demand for silence. Rabbi Israel of Rizhin, whom Buber admits baffles him, developed an aphoristic style,

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delighting in the power of words. Buber charges the rabbi with self-indulgence. While admitting Rabbi Israel "certainly a genius," he comments on the arrogance preventing Rabbi Israel from serving as "the vessel and the voice of the religious spirit."6 Even this self-indulgent leader, however, sometimes divines the truth. Struggling to understand Exodus 20:21-22, Rabbi Israel intuited an important lack in his own aphoristic style. Although renowned as a conversationalist whose use of language gained him followers and fame, Rabbi Israel recognized the limits of words. Exodus 20:21-22 distinguishes between a sacrificial altar made of earth and one made of stones. God prefers the former but will accept the latter if the stones are rough hewn and not of fashioned stone. Rabbi Israel, according to Buber, applied this verse to worship of God. God, he stated, preferred silence, but if words are used, they should be unfashioned, spontaneous, and unrefined.7 Despite his own affectation of "beautiful speaking," Rabbi Israel admitted that God has no love of such speech and desires unsophisticated, rough hewn words, if not an abandonment of speech altogether. Buber, like Rabbi Israel, considers silence greater than language. For Buber, language "displaces rather than reflects the reality being discussed."8 Buber's approval of Rabbi Israel's silence and his rejection of Rabbi Israel's aphorisms reflect his view of language and its limitations even more than his evaluation of the development of hasidism and its historical phases. Buber himself imitates the masters of silence and

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moved from the "easy word" of beautiful speaking in his early writings to speaking truthfully in a stammering language that acknowledges the limits of any spoken word.9

GERSHOM SCHOLEM AND BUBER

Gershom Scholem, who, in contrast to Buber, focuses on hasidic theory more than hasidic story, offers a different evaluation of Rabbi Israel of Rizhin. Indeed, Scholem once challenged Buber on his lack of interest in that Rebbe. Scholem pointed to the "unfathomable" words of Rabbi Israel concerning the messianic time: in those days people will quarrel not with one another but with themselves; in those days the world will no longer have images since the image and its object will bear no relation to one another. These ideas, Scholem claims, demonstrate how mystics "fathom the unfathomable." Buber, however, shows no interest in such paradoxes and claims not to understand them. Scholem sees in such statements "the real phenomenon of hasidism, both in its grandeur and in its decay...."10 Scholem disagrees with Buber to such an extent in his positive evaluation of this last phase of hasidism that despite his usual neglect of hasidic tales, he actually turns to a story of Rabbi Israel of Rizhin at the conclusion of his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. According to the tale,

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the Rabbi of Rizhin once faced a crisis similar to that faced by his predecessors. He recalled that when the founder of hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, confronted the problem, he combined magical technique (theurgy) with an appeal to God and thus resolved the crisis. When a later disciple encountered the same challenge, he no longer knew the entire process of magical actions. Nevertheless, he performed what he knew and uttered his prayer to God, and this sufficed. The Rabbi of Rizhin, however, only remembered the story and knew neither the theurgy nor the prayer. By telling the story, he accomplished the purpose. The tale by itself achieved the miracle aimed at by the theurgy.11 Some interpreters of hasidism suggest that the tale shows how a decline in theurgy may increase the need to rely on purely human powers of redemption. They emphasize the inherent spiritual strength of storytelling as a religious act. Moshe Idel, in a recent study of Jewish mysticism, challenges this view and claims instead that the story replaces theurgy with personal mysticism, with the union of the narrator to the divine addressee of the story.12 Perhaps Buber intuits this insight and therefore demurs from the general acclaim given the story. He never reproduces the tale and expresses his disapproval of Rabbi Israel. Buber exalts hasidism because it rejects personal mysticism and engages instead in an evocation of the lived reality that language only partially reveals and usually conceals too well.

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Perhaps this recognition explains a rather strange interchange between Scholem and Buber. Once, Scholem remarks, he asked Buber why he disliked Rabbi Israel, and Buber responded that he did not "understand" this teacher.13 This response conceals more than it reveals. What Buber did not "understand" lay in the human qualities of the teacher; the artificial "cleverness" of Rabbi Israel seemed somehow inauthentic to him, less an expression of mythic reality than a crystallization and fossilizing of "religion," an example of dead form replacing living religiosity. Those comfortable with how religion simplifies the complexity of life may well be attracted to the Rizhiner. That very sophistication, however, repels those who look to myth as an invitation to response. The different approaches to language separating Buber and Scholem shape each thinker's view of Jewish myth. Buber's paradigm of language as a secondary reflection on an immediate experience parallels his definition of myth. For Buber, Jewish myth records, inadequately but faithfully, an event in human experience. While the stories of the hasidim seem to tell about ideas and values, Buber claims that they actually point to a living event; they suggest that only a life, not a doctrine, expresses truth.14 Even when Scholem's disciples tend to agree with Buber in discerning the importance of stories about zaddikim, they reject his use of I-You philosophy as a way of interpreting the

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mystic power in the tales. Thus Joseph Dan combines Buber's emphasis on the value of hasidic narrative with Scholem's insistence on their theological content. He suggests that the stories are simultaneously symbolizations of the cosmic theories found in classical Jewish mysticism and myths seeking heroic models in times of crisis.15 Such an attempted reconciliation of story and theory, however, misses the dramatic dichotomy between Buber and Scholem on the meaning of language. The two disagree not merely about the meaning of hasidism but more importantly about how myth expresses truth.

BUBER AND HASIDIC LANGUAGE 16 The key to Buber's approach lies in his contention that "All speech, therefore, is answering, responding."17 Speech arises in response to a human experience. It translates into tangible symbols a reality that originally occurs in the relationship between one person and another. Myth for Buber serves as the language for religious experience. As language responds to daily experience, so myth responds to extraordinary experience. Just as language must be decoded by comparing the linguistic symbol with the referent to which it points, so myths must be traced back to their originating events. The truth of language depends on its accuracy in reporting events in the world. The truth of myth depends on

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its accuracy in reflecting its event that gave rise to its creation. Just, however, as language does not exhaust the reality within which human beings live, so, too, for Buber myth does not exhaust the religious reality from which it originates. Buber's view of myth as the language that inadequately points to a religious event pervades his study of hasidism. He seeks to evoke the kernel of a "memory that can nonetheless outstrip all imagination."18 Emphasizing the human value of this memory, Buber finds the value of myth in its effect on people, not in the message it transmits. Buber opposes distilling myth into knowledge rather than into life. In this vein Buber claims that "genuine religious movements" do not create philosophies of life but reinforce each person's ability to live that life. Religious myths evoke the possibility of living rather than transmit a message about the meaning of existence. These myths focus not on "the solution of the world mystery" by providing diagrams of some external reality. Instead, Buber contends that myths "equip" people "to live from the strength of the mystery." Since myths shape the way people live rather than how they think, Buber insists that they do not "instruct about the nature of God" but rather point each person to the path on which God can be met. Buber interprets myths the way he interprets all language: as an inadequate suggestion of a fuller truth, the truth of human living.19 Buber's argument rests on the claim that myth derives from reflection on an event. God's

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voice meets people in every situation in a unique and singular way. On reflection, the variety of voices arising from these moments takes on a unity and becomes the expression of the single voice of the Lord of the world. Myth expresses that intuition in language and provides a key by which to reflect on new situations and on the voices arising from them.20 Since Buber's writing about language and myth resembles that of Ernst Cassirer, a contrast between the two illuminates Buber's distinctiveness. Both Cassirer and Buber recognize the "God of the moment" as the immediate reality meeting people from "some entirely concrete and individual, neverrecurring situation." Like Buber, Cassirer distinguishes between the image of that momentary God created by language and the reality of its immediacy. Both Cassirer and Buber turn to poetry rather than philosophy to discover the "origins" of language. Trying to convey his understanding of religion, Buber provides what he calls "a gauche comparison." Understanding a poem, he suggests, occurs immediately as a reader suddenly grasps the meaning behind the poet's words. Continued study of one poet, however, prepares readers so that their immediate meeting with the poem takes on greater fullness and significance. "In such a way," he claims, "out of the moment Gods there arises for us with a single identity the Lord of the voice, the One."21 Buber differs significantly from Cassirer. Where Cassirer's momentary gods

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dissolve into the remembered image, Buber's point beyond themselves to "the One." This difference grows out of the way Buber thinks language and religion are related to each other. Language not only reflects upon truth but draws attention to it. While language objectifies, it also addresses. Language moves between "speaking about" and "speaking to." Language uses signs to point backward at an immediate experience; religion uses myth to point backward to a meeting with God; language calls reality into being again and again; religion invites a renewed I-You meeting with the divine in which "the All reveals itself as language," thus completing the circle. The dynamic interplay of the immediacy of meeting with the language reflecting that meeting seems to Buber a double activity: while language does suggest the ultimate "One," it also legitimates and justifies the individual selves making up the "All". Thus language stimulates diversity, even while confining it. Language and myth point backward toward their origins in experience and beyond themselves to a renewed contact with the fullness of original experience.22 Language flows from a unique meeting that cannot be replaced by any "experience."

SCHOLEM AND HASIDIC MYTH

Scholem's view of myth generally, and of Jewish myth in particular, differs radically from Buber's.23 Scholem trusts language. He

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emphasizes that the word represents a "real" entity: it points to an actual thing in the world. According to Scholem, mystics portray a real world that consists solely of language. Struggling to find a new way of expressing the ineffable deity, mystics devise a new reality, a reality they construct through words. In that new language, Scholem contends, "the divine things are at the same time the divine words." Words become images; language and spiritual reality become one. In the mystical system "Only that which lives in any particular thing as language is its essential life." Scholem's approach to Jewish mysticism reflects his understanding of it as language. He tries to decode its symbols and translate them from one vocabulary into another. When Scholem decodes mystical myth, he shows how it creates a new language that participates in the divine truth to which it points.24 Scholem, unlike Buber, offers no definition of myth. He prefers to let the data establish their own self-definition. His long article on "Myth and Kabbalah" gathers copious examples of symbols forming a mythic vocabulary to show how mystics conveyed an ineffable experience in concrete images and evocative symbols. By producing such a compendium of symbols, Scholem shows how myth attempts to transmit a concrete intuition of the divine through the medium of language. Symbolism reflects upon the mystical experience and transforms experience into concrete reality. Myth linguistically portrays the divine being.25

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Philosophers, he believes, misunderstand reality by reducing it to rational concepts. While, he claims, the philosophical approach demands that knowledge fit into an intellectual framework, mystics reject that framework and thereby grasp reality more truly. Scholem argues that mystics express in myth and symbol what philosophers can only call "ineffable," that is to say, inaccessible to their systems. He thinks that philosophers err because they identify reality with what is expressible in their special terms. Mystics see more clearly and therefore create a language adequate to the full scope of truth, the language of myth.26 In so doing, they create a vocabulary that evokes the world it portrays. For Scholem, mythical language serves the mystic as rational language serves the philosophers. In both cases, language refers to an experience in the objective world that bridges apprehension and experience. Scholem, much like the early gnostics, identifies mystical secrets with a higher truth than that which philosophers perceive and interprets myth as a specially coded and mysterious language that only the initiated can understand.27 Myth presents humanity with a singular gift: a more complete reality than that which philosophy gives.

MYTH, REVELATION, AND PHILOSOPHY

Buber's emphasis on living response leads him to understand the relationship of

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myth and philosophy differently from Scholem. Not only myth but also philosophy arises in spontaneous answer to a divine call. Both philosophy and myth are secondary reflections on a primary experience. Language, whether conceptual and philosophical or mythic and mystical, testifies to a reality beyond itself for Buber, the reality of revelation. Buber understands by revelation not a specific message but "that meeting of the divine and the human in which the human has a factual share." He claims that philosophy still plays a role in interpreting that meeting. Revelation, as he understands it, "summons reason" to a twofold task. First, reason must help expound the implications of revelation. It must aid in converting the immediacy of meeting into an on-going path. Second, however, reason must heed the challenge of revelation. It must "be stirred and renewed by it."28 Not only should students of myth and philosophy beware of reductionism; they must recognize that both myth and philosophy lie open to the demands growing from the event that gave them birth: a revelation about reality. Scholem confronts the challenge of revelation in a distinctive way. He suggests that revelation as traditionally received represents an alternative truth to that advanced by Jewish mystics. The mystic mediates between the raw material of a personal revelation, which points to an extraordinary and untraditional view of God and God's demands as presented in tradition.29 The mystic engages in a

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process of translation: the language of myth translates an esoteric revelation into a more public language. When, however, the translation appears too idiosyncratic or free, then tradition acts to keep it within comprehensible boundaries. This balancing act, however, brings a tension with it. Scholem considers "the mystical sphere" a "meeting-place" of primitive mythology and developed revelation. That paradox combines an elevated theory of religious life with "revival" of naive mythic symbols. The mystic for Scholem intuits truth on a different plane from ordinary Jews. Mystics then explain that truth in terms of the norms governing traditional Jewish behavior. While the Jewish mystics seem to affirm traditional ways of expressing religious truth, Scholem shows how they use the expressions and literature of rabbinic Judaism as a point of departure to convey a new message. The content of the message is revolutionary; the descriptive terms they use are traditional. Mystical myth succeeds, Scholem thinks, just because it combines "the spiritual heritage of rabbinical Judaism" with "the main forces active in Judaism."30 Scholem understands this success as linguistic conquest. Jewish mystics create a religious vocabulary by which to describe their experience of reality. They do not, as philosophers strive to do, evolve a new language, but use the old language in a new way. Philosophers transform a people's understanding of God. Mystics communicate the reality of God, presenting rather than explicating truth.31

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Scholem's dichotomy forces a choice between philosophical and mystical approaches. Myth differs from philosophy by using old language in a new way rather than by inventing a new language. Buber disagrees and suggests that while sometimes explaining and sometimes asserting, language may also convey an opportunity. Language sets the choice of how to live before each person. The major distinction among believers, Buber claims, is that between those affirming a commanding God and those denying such a God. A person can believe that God creates and sustains the world without feeling an obligation to that deity. When a person recognizes God as a concerned other making demands of humanity, then belief leads to responsive living. Religions differ not in their affirmation that God is real but in their views of whether the deity interacts with humanity or remains aloof from it. People differ not because one is a theist and the other an atheist but because of their acceptance or rejection of an obligation to the divine.32 Myth for Buber conveys the reality of choice by confronting each person with the necessity for decision. Buber holds that myth succeeds only when, like language, it evokes the reality that created it and when, by stimulating speech, it enables people to become more fully human.33 This emphasis on reality, not language, testifies, as Maurice Friedman suggests, that "More important than Buber's having developed a philosophy of the word is the fact that he became and

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remained a person of the word, of the lived word that is spoken."34

RABBI NAHMAN OF BRATZLAV

One early confrontation between Buber's and Scholem's understanding of myth arose over Buber's free renderings of the tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav.35 How might Buber's view of myth as language compare with Scholem's when tested against those tales? Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav (17721812), a great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, fascinates modern scholars of literature, psychology, and religion. He stood against the stream of his times, opposing rationalists, secularists, and rival mystical leaders. Caught up in the controversies of his day, he created a literature that continues to exercise an influence over his followers.36 He sought a broad audience and popularized pithy sayings, often inventing such sayings based on his unique reading of primary materials. Finally, he chose storytelling as the most effective means of popularizing Jewish teachings. The thirteen major tales which he composed distill his religious message and illuminate his teachings. Arthur Green, a recognized scholar of hasidism in general and of Rabbi Nahman in particular, realizes this aspect of the tales and therefore partially sides with Buber against Scholem on the importance of hasidic stories in understanding hasidic religion.37 It

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remains questionable, however, whether the meaning of those tales in fact agrees more with Buber than with Scholem. Rabbi Nahman himself provides a key to help decode the meaning of his stories.38 Nahman understood stories as responses to the needs of the hour. Rabbinic literature often quotes Psalm 119: "It is time to work for the Lord since they have voided His Torah." When Jews disobey God's laws (when they void His Torah), then extraordinary measures must be taken. Some early rabbis interpret the verse differently: when it is time to work for the Lord, then you are permitted to void His Torah! Rabbi Nahman interprets the verse in this way, justifying his use of folklore and popular literature as a necessary strategy in a time of crisis. Rabbi Nahman uses stories to adapt transcendent teachings to the chaotic world in which we live. "After evil decrees were issued against the world," Nahman writes, "prayer was forced to disguise itself as story." Nahman uses stories as an external expression of exalted spiritual realities and claims that they effect a reparation on the upper worlds when usual means such as Torah and Prayer fail. For him, Jewish stories have redemptive value, just as popular conversation elevates ordinary people by linking them to the knowledge of the zaddik, the righteous leader. When a zaddik reveals secret meaning, he multiplies peace in the world, clothing the hidden light of truth in a strange garment. Nahman claims that a zaddik fulfills three tasks: gaining knowledge of true piety (fear

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of the Lord), revealing the means of gaining such piety, and transmitting that piety through the telling of stories. These stories awaken people from their sleep to service of God. In some ways Nahman's view of storytelling supports Buber's contentions. Nahman must hide religious truth within the protective shell of myth. Myth serves to preserve silence; its very artificiality draws attention to its distance from reality. Scholem can argue with equal justification that Nahman's strategy preserves the essential teaching: Nahman merely disguises the form of expression, not the content. Rabbi Nahman indicates the multivalent meanings of religious symbols in his stories. His myths draw from classical sources and allude to them. His tales intertwine biblical phrases with Yiddish, the common language of Jews in his day, echoing popular folklore while hinting at references to traditional lore and rabbinic teachings. Nahman insists again and again that his stories constitute Torah and must be linked to Judaism's normative books. That allusiveness confirms Buber's intuition. Buber claims that Nahman's relationship to language emphasized dynamic interaction. Nahman strove for the mutuality in which speaker and hearer dissolve into one. Thus Buber attempts to catch the unspoken teaching of mutuality whereas Scholem restricts himself to collecting Nahman's words in a complete bibliography of his writings.39

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Nahman's own testimony can fit either Buber's framework or Scholem's. How does each interpretive structure suit particular tales? The first point of debate arises over the value of silence. Buber refuses to translate or analyze Rabbi Nahman's first tale. He considers it a "fairy tale," "unoriginal" and not part of Rabbi Nahman's religious contribution. The story itself seems to bear out this view.40 The tale describes the servant of a great king. The king had six sons and a single daughter, whom he particularly loved. Once, however, she angered him, and he cursed her saying "May the 'Not-Good' take you away." In the morning she was gone and no one knew where she was. The king's trusted servant went in search of her, encountering obstacles along the way. Even after finding her, he had to pass certain trials. Twice he failed in his purpose, once by eating an apple and once by drinking wine. Thereafter he enlisted the aid of three giants, one of whom summoned all the winds. One wind knew that the princess had been taken to a golden mountain and was held in a pearly castle. Equipped with magical means, including a purse that could not be emptied of money, the king's servant eventually succeeded. While apparently made up of common folk motifs, the story actually portrays the mythic system about which Gershom Scholem writes. Scholem offers several renditions of this basic kabbalistic myth.41 He claims

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that mystical truth portrays a metaphysical reality as objective truth. According to this myth, the world began with a catastrophe: God's pure holiness shattered the shell of creation, and sparks of holiness became trapped in the shards of that shell. The first human, Adam, forfeited the opportunity to liberate those sparks, as did succeeding generations. Only the Jews who possess the tool of Torah as mystically understood can redeem creation from the effects of the original crisis. Mystical evocations of this myth provide blueprints for redemption. They point unequivocally to the primal crisis, its progression through history, and the techniques for achieving liberation of the sparks of holiness and restoring the world to its pristine purity. Rabbi Nahman's first tale recapitulates that cosmic myth, thereby affirming Scholem's contention: just as language communicates truths about the world of experience, so myth conveys truths about reality beyond experience. With this in mind, Arnold Band, a noted scholar of Hebrew literature, points out that Rabbi Nahman makes use of a "simple folktale" to provide "model of the cosmic drama which filled Lurianic Kabbalah and obsessed Nahman and other hasidic masters."42 The story provides a blueprint for redemption. The princess represents the ideal world that was destroyed by human error: the foolish curse of the king. Only the lowly servant, modern Jews, can succeed in reversing this catastrophe by avoiding the major temptations of life: the taboo on eating

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recalls the sin in the Garden of Eden; the taboo on drinking recalls the sin of Noah after the flood; the detailed instructions given the servant parallel the laws of Moses; the three giants symbolize the magical forces aiding in tikkun or reparation by which a wise adept can liberate a fallen world. As a magician's guide to world redemption, the story confirms Scholem's advocacy of stories as magic rather than Buber's call for silence. Even Band, however, recognizes the limitations of this analysis based on mystical cosmology. The tale lacks a real "closure." It ends by merely saying that the servant liberated the princess but does not describe the actual process of such liberation. "Nahman," he explains, "declined to describe the actual act of redemption."43 Nevertheless, Nahman hints at the higher meaning of the tale by claiming that it has so much power that "whoever heard it had thoughts of repentance."44 Yoav Elstein analyzes the mythical meaning of this story, discovering that while it does use the kabbalistic system as a background, it also evinces a deeper structure. The story develops through parallels and opposites to typify a basic human view of reality rooted in psychology rather than cosmology. Superficially, the story seems to emphasize the redemption of the lost princess. In reality, however, it sketches the yearning of the minister of the king. The story shows how self-discipline, prayer, and desire train a person in the worship of God. Nahman's tale may well be a tale of silence

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since he extols not the attainment of a human goal but the motivation that leads a person to pursue that goal.45 This perspective confirms Buber's understanding of myth. Although the myth may not represent an I-You meeting, it acts as an affirmation of human life rather than as a magical attempt to manipulate cosmic redemption. While Scholem's literalist approach to language appears to function well, it cannot explain the truncated ending of the tale or its focus on the yearning of the king's minister. Buber's identification of the myth as a myth of human meeting fits the narrative of the story better.

MYSTICAL MYTH

Buber may correctly understand the purpose of Rabbi Nahman as a didactic author but still misinterpret the myths used. Scholem, at least, argues that Buber distorts the stories by ignoring the "Kabbalistic ethos" that, in his view "is probably the most important legacy of the Kabbalah to Hasidism." He charges that Buber's personal commitment to "religious anarchism and existentialism" limits his ability to discern the true meaning of Rabbi Nahman's stories.46 Nahman's tale "The Switched Children" seems a simple story in which the "fairy tale" elements dominate. The tale presents an opportunity for judging whether Buber indeed pushes hasidic myth too far. The classic motif tells of two

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children switched at birth who eventually regain their original status. Whose view of mythic language better captures Nahman's intentions in relating this tale?47 The tale begins with two switched infants: the king's son grows up as a servant and a servant's son as the prince. When the supposed prince becomes the king, he cannot hide his true nature. Rumors circulate about the switched infants. The false king persecutes the true king's son, who flees into exile and drowns his feelings of injustice in wine. No longer does he act like a prince; he no longer even acts like a rational human being; he wallows in his desires and becomes like an animal. To earn his living, he serves as a herdsman, and the people call him "the cattle man," indicating his decline into animal sensuality. Once while keeping herd, however, two animals run off; pursuing them without success, he loses his way in a dark forest, he meets a "forest man" who warns him, "Do not keep pursuing your sins." Pausing, the king's son meets his rival, who does not recognize him but who instead retells the story, adding that his conscience had bothered him because of his treatment of an innocent person. Finally, he recounts, he lost his way in this forest and has wandered hungry and thirsty for days. The false king sells himself into bondage to the true king's son for food and drink. As the story progresses, the two travelers meet the forest man and spend time with him. The true king's son learns the song of the animals and increases his

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domination over the servant's son. When, finally, the two leave the forest, the forest master gives the true king's son a musical instrument which the prince exchanges at the gates of a great city for the ability to deduce one thing from another. Using this knowledge, the true king's son passes various tests to become king over the city, where he restores order to a chaotic kingdom. Once the order returns, he states to his companion, "Now I know that you are the servant's son and I am the true son of the king." Arnold Band calls this story "a study in the discovery or rediscovery of self." He shows how mystical interpreters explain the story as "a dramatization on a personal level of the process ... whereby the cosmos is restored to the harmony" of its primal creation. On the level of plot the tale differs considerably from Rabbi Nahman's first tale. On the mythic level, however, the images point to the same reality. The ordeals the true king's son undergoes parallel those of the king's minister in the previous tale. Redemption occurs only after a primal fall. The true son gains his appropriate status only by learning to use magical instruments given him as a reward for his actions and perceptions. The process of cosmic reparation takes place by stages. Scholem's view seems confirmed. Despite superficial differences, the images used by Nahman point to a single myth: the myth Scholem identifies in the later kabbalah.48

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Other interpreters, however, see the myth in psychological terms. Nahman's tale may remind people of their inner division. The two protagonists may mirror two internal realities, two impulses within each person. Joseph Weiss, whose pioneering work on Rabbi Nahman's psychology lay the foundation for future studies, claims that Nahman himself identified with the "divided ego" of the story. Weiss claims that Nahman focuses on the problem of the alienated self and its disastrous consequences. Yehudit Kuk, an observant traditional Jew who presents Rabbi Nahman as an idea for modern Israelis, seems to agree with some of these conclusions. She interprets the story as an allegory of how each person transforms the evil impulse into a force for good. While recognizing the resemblance of the story to the traditional kabbalistic symbols, she also understands them in personal terms. In her view the tale advocates traditional Jewish values and practices: repentance, prayer, the offering of animal sacrifices, and Sabbath observance. Her analysis, however, goes even further to see the tale as an allegory about the people of Israel and the nations of the world. Israel has lost its way in the world. The other nations dominate history and enslave the Jews. Jews, according to Rabbi Nahman, can reassert themselves only by moral actions which transform society itself. Jews will regain power only when they have created an ordered world. The redemption of the Jewish people as the prince among the nations will occur only after the Jews rediscover their royal task of restoring the divine pattern

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intended by creation. This interpretation helps a reader decode references in the story as allusions to Israel's exile, its love of the Land of Israel, and the possibility of its return to a national home.4 9 As the diverse interpretations show, Nahman's story has a multivalent meaning. Whether Scholem or Buber correctly understands "the" mystical myth, Buber offers a better model of how mythic tales function in mystical writing. As Kuk and Weiss suggest, the stories evoke a multiplicity of responses. Buber's view of myth as a stimulus to I-You relationships allows for this variability; Scholem's interpretation does not. In this story of the switched children, Buber permits the text to speak for itself. He refrains from any major alteration of Nahman's story as such. Sometimes, however, he transforms his sources in modern ways to obscure clear references to gnostic or magical theories. Buber avoids such references because of his discomfort with magic as an alternative to religion. Critics often fault Buber for rewriting hasidic tales in his own image.50

SIMPLICITY IN HASIDIC MYTH

One of Rabbi Nahman's stories might appear to support Buber. The "Tale of the Clever and Simple Man" shows the superiority

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of simplicity to the sophistication of philosophy and magical theory. Nahman uses the tale to show how philosophy leads to doubt and suspicion. Piety depends on simple trust rather than on an esoteric intellectualism. Precisely this story, however, exposes the dangers of Buber's approach. The conclusion of the tale depicts a confrontation between the incarnation of evil, Satan, and a righteous leader, called the Baal Shem. That title reveals some ambiguity. Rabbi Nahman clearly does not refer to his great grandfather. The story, however, makes the Baal Shem involved as more than a mere magician. Perhaps Rabbi Nahman hopes that his readers will learn that a leader who appears only as a popular wonder worker actually fulfills a more exalted function in the world. The story conveys quite clearly the magical power of the zaddik to protect his followers from the machinations of the devil. Buber omitted all references to demonic power from the story. When, years later, challenged on this point, he admitted that he regretted much in his translations of Nahman's tales. On this point, however, he could see no alternative, even with his new perspective. A modern author cannot present evil in so magical a way.51 Rabbi Nahman's tale tells of two brothers, one clever and one simple, and as in many folk tales, the simple son succeeds while the clever son fails. The story reaches its climax when the devil catches the clever brother in his trap. The simple brother's attempts to prove the reality of

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Satan to his sophisticated sibling go unheeded. Finally, however, the clever brother acknowledges Satan's power, throws himself on the mercy of a hasidic saint, and escapes the devil's clutches. By admitting the reality of evil, the clever brother can grapple with it, in himself and in others, and finally triumph. Only those who pretend that evil does not exist fall into its traps. Those who recognize its threat can transform the evil impulse and use it for good. Retelling this story, Buber not only omits the final episode but alters apparently minor details to create a psychologically compelling rather than a magically oriented story. The original tale emphasizes that the "wisdom" of the clever son stems from philosophy. He studies medicine, Latin, and then philosophy. Buber merely states that he "grasped the wisdom" of his teachers with penetrating acuteness. Nahman's tale focuses on the clever man's dissatisfaction with himself. Buber transforms this attitude into an inability to accept criticism from others. Finally, Nahman reports that the clever brother assimilated into the gentile world: at one point he appeals to a gentile magistrate against the Baal Shem. Buber omits all reference to that theme of Jewish/non-Jewish tension. Arnold Band suggests that the story moves in three sequences, building up to the final contrast between belief and skepticism, in which the clever brother finally accepts the hasidic saint. Buber has altered not only some details in the

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story but also its inner structure. Buber's rendition of the story undermines this carefully prepared literary architecture. Buber's deviations from the original tale suggest that Scholem correctly notes his methodological limitations. Almost intentionally, Buber avoids the esotericism which permeates hasidism and specifically the hasidic exaltation of the zaddik.52 Belief in the zaddik need not, however, imply esotericism. Yehudit Kuk explains how the zaddik enables each person to begin the process of growing toward God. Both the simple brother and the clever brother experience the influence of the Baal Shem as a moral force that reaches out to them as people. The irreducible power of the zaddik may lie in his human qualities, not in esoteric magical skills.53 Joseph Weiss suggests that the problem of "evil" for Rabbi Nahman lay in the ambiguity of truth and wisdom itself. On this reading, Nahman supports the position of neither the simple man nor the clever man. The story confronts its readers with the basic problem of human life: how to attain both wisdom and belief.54 Human beings cannot live with either simplicity or wisdom alone. In the story the simple man does gain wisdom. In the epilogue that Buber omits the clever son seems to gain the faith of his brother. The story offers no unambivalent response to either wisdom or simplicity. Buber has clearly altered the original story. Nevertheless, his alterations convey the sense of the myth. His contention that

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the myth reflects an event of meeting rather than a set of cognitive principles explains the dynamics of the tale as well as Scholem's theory does. While Buber's uneasiness with magical elements in hasidism leads him to transform the story, his understanding of myth as evocative rather than denotative language enables him to remain true to the intention of the tale.

REDEMPTION IN HASIDIC MYTH

The three tales of Nahman use folklore and "fairy tale" elements to evoke a sense of fantasy. Yet Buber's description of Rabbi Nahman's journey to the land of Israel evokes a contrasting realism.55 Several scholars agree with Buber's contention that Nahman introduces a major change in Jewish thinking about the land of Israel. Arthur Green, in his definitive study of Rabbi Nahman, comments that while he cannot accept Buber's method, he finds his basic point that Nahman "marks a new beginning of a realistic relationship with Erez Israel, in contrast to earlier oversimplification and romanticization," valuable and "worthy of consideration."56 In his anthology of hasidic stories Joseph Dan introduces the story of the journey by remarking on Buber's rendition. Dan also suggests that the story is "realistic despite hasidic attempts to symbolism."57 Hasidism, at least as Rabbi Nahman lived it, may have provided an

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impetus to Zionism as a realistic political movement. Scholem's trust in language leads him in an opposite direction. He refused to be misled by apparently realistic hopes for a restoration in Zion. In contrast to Buber, Scholem distrusts a "Zionist" view of hasidism. He emphasizes the role Israel played as an idea in Jewish mystical thought and contrasts that role to Israel's potential as a real, physical place. Buber's extension of Nahman's symbolism to a political program seems erroneous. Scholem thus notes that "The creative power of Hasidism was centered on the mystical life," not on history. He avers that "the hasidic movement, in spite of many modern affirmations to the contrary, could do without the Land of Israel."58 Where Buber emphasizes the realism in the story as an example of a full human life, Scholem considers the "real" Israel of hasidism to be a metaphysical one. Nahman himself seems to understand the story in cosmological terms. Later commentators discern metaphysical implications in the story similar to those in the thirteen more "fabulous" tales. Comparing the narrative given by Dan with Buber's suggests that Buber has overemphasized the realism of the tale.59 Buber's approach, however, finds some confirmation in other sources. Buber contends that Nahman considers the lived human life central and therefore turns to concrete experience. He remarks that Israel itself stands for "simplicity" rather than for complex symbolism. In short, he

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concludes, "it is the true wisdom to taste in one's bread all the pleasant tastes of the world."60 Other interpreters unite the two approaches. Meir Urian, an Israeli critic who combines literary studies with interpretations of hasidism, considers Nahman the most "messianic" of all the hasidic leaders. Nevertheless, he remarks that Nahman believes that only by realizing the concrete reality of the Land of Israel can Jews truly understand its metaphysical meaning. In the same way, Nahman argues, the metaphysical status of a true zaddik needs the confirmation and reality of a concrete, living zaddik. Ironically, Nahma n's own followers have abandoned such a living zaddik in favor of the continued metaphysical presence of Nahman even after his death.61 The messianic element within Rabbi Nahman's writings seems to echo that metaphysical ideal. Scholem recognizes Nahman's messianic leanings, even while suggesting that hasidism neutralized their political significance. From this standpoint Nahman's stories symbolize redemption by telling the tale of cosmic disaster and suggesting the path to cosmic healing.62 Nahman himself emphasizes that his stories have a messianic purpose: they bind Jews to their true leader, the zaddik, the righteous master, the rebbe. Why must an individual be drawn to a zaddik? Rabbi Nahman replies that people need guidance and instruction if they are to accomplish

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their task of redeeming a fallen world. They need teachers who take the humanity of their students more seriously than either material goals or intellectual standards. Buber explains this answer by suggesting that Nahman told tales to awaken the hearts of his disciples: "He wanted to plant a mystical idea or a truth of life in the hearts of his disciples." By doing this, according to Buber, he addressed their need and their individuality. Using the stories for this address did not make them less symbolic but "more inward."63 Naturally, others disagree and accuse Buber of making the stories appear too "psychological," thus ignoring "both the stark kabbalistic allusions of the Hebrew and the numinous tone" of the original. In this case the issue is whether the stories act as myth in Scholem's sense or as revelation in Buber's.64

BUBER'S POPULAR APPEAL

Buber's approach to hasidism reveals a sensitivity to human needs. That sensitivity may well explain the popularity of his presentation of hasidic lore. Rabbi Nahman himself understood the need for such an approach and used his stories to bring his followers closer to his ideas. Buber's recognition of this pedagogy leads him to oppose Scholem's construction of the division between the hasidim and normative Judaism. Scholem follows traditional

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learning, which suggests that a tension between the latent antinomianism of Jewish mysticism and the legalism of normative Judaism— between, as he called it, the language of revelation and the language of myth— created the controversy between rabbinical authorities (mitnagdim) and the hasidim. Buber identifies the tension as one between the immediacy of the event of revelation itself and the language describing it. Rabbi Nahman's tale of "The Rabbi's Son" bristles with the tension between normative Jewish leaders and hasidic mystics while relating a tragic story of the delay of an imminent redemption. This story, Nahman's eighth tale, tells of a young man's thwarted attempt to find a teacher. Unlike other hasidic stories of its type, this one ends in tragedy.65 The story describes the son of an anti-hasidic rabbi who complains that his study lacks soul. Persuaded that only a hasidic teacher can help him, he pleads for his father's permission to visit a hasidic master. His father, however, seeks to dissuade him since the hasidic rebbe lacks rabbinic qualifications: the master ignores the classic texts and, instead, tells popular stories. This emphasis on the normative tradition prevents the father from understanding his son. When the son perseveres in demanding to visit the hasidic teacher, the father relents but places conditions on the visit: if any unusual obstacle prevents their journey, they must turn back in the knowledge that God has not looked favorably on their endeavor. Several

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obstacles do arise. Twice the wagon breaks down and cannot proceed. On their third try they meet a merchant who persuades the father that the hasidic rebbe is a charlatan and fake. True to their agreement, father and son return home. Father and son return home, but the son, seeking fulfillment of something "lacking" within his soul, despairs of his hope of self-fulfillment and dies, a victim to his father's blindness. The father, too, does not escape the consequences of his deeds. Night after night he dreams of his son, who tells him to visit the hasidic master. On his way the father meets the merchant who had slandered the rebbe, and that man identifies himself as none other than Satan. Satan reveals that had the rebbe met with the lad, then the messiah would have come and redemption would have been complete. The father's reliance on traditional norms and on pragmatic considerations prevented the realization of universal redemption. When the father reaches the zaddik, he cries out in despair for "those who are lost and will return no more."66 On this ambiguous note Rabbi Nahman concludes, but a pious editor has added a warning about the machinations of Satan and the need to avoid satanic traps. Nahman's story displays a not unusual metaphorical use of a generational conflict to suggest the struggle between the forces of good and those of evil.67 The cosmic dimensions of that contest and its enduring persistence may explain why this story,

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unlike the three other stories, ends tragically. From Scholem's perspective the tension here resembles that between revelation and myth. Revelation offers a clear path, a sense of perfection. Myth, by contrast, strives against imperfection, against an unredeemed world. The story ends tragically because the normative tradition refuses to recognize the need to repair the world and cannot penetrate the disguise of Satan. Buber's telling of this tale emphasizes compassion. Where Nahman tells that the son sought to improve a personal imperfection, Buber emphasizes a need to look beyond self-absorption toward either the world outside or the inner world of imagination. Where Nahman has the son consult with "two young men," who advise him to go to a zaddik, Buber has him associate with a group of hasidim who tell him that the zaddik is neither learned nor holy but rather compassionate. The son, on Buber's reading, then identifies this compassion with "the rung of the great light," anticipating what Nahman reveals only at the end: when the great light and small light meet, redemption will occur. This evasion of the esoteric references in the story culminates in Buber's description of the final outcry in the story. For Buber, the father, finally realizing the error of his ways, cries out in anguish over his own lack of compassion. Buber's interpretation follows his own intuition about the meaning of myth. If myth and revelation equally report and reflect on a formative event, tension arises

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when the form replaces the reality it represents. The father in the story focuses on external truths: those found in books or in experienced reality. He forgets that both tradition and pragmatic values arise only through a meeting between people. Redemption occurs when that meeting takes place. Recognizing his error, the father cries out with his new knowledge, lamenting the meeting that cannot now occur. This view of the story clearly emphasizes the psychological rather than the metaphorical resonance of the characters and plot. Nahman never states which of these purposes his story serves. Readers, however, cannot fail to find themselves confronted by the choice facing the rabbi in the tale. Every person encounters an ambiguous mixture of tradition, pragmatism, and inner motivation complicating personal choices. Nahman himself may well have identified himself with each character in the tale and told the story to objectify and understand his own predicament.68 Current readers can identify themselves with characteristics in each character, whether that contention holds true or not. Buber's view of this story as an example of a myth recalling and inspiring an event in human decision making, as a "word" pointing to a human meeting, explains the details of the tale as adequately as Scholem's. The four stories considered prove as amenable to Buber's view of myth as to Scholem's. As examples of human communication, they may represent language either as a spiritual fact itself or as a

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symbolic response to a spiritual fact. Those who share Scholem's trust in language will accept Nahman's stories as testimony to a mythic reality. Those sympathetic to Buber's linguistic skepticism will recognize how the stories invite response on a variety of levels. Buber reports Nahman as claiming that people create words because they cannot withstand silence. God offers a person grace in "holy silence" until, unable to "endure the power of silence," the person "cries aloud."69 Myth represents such a "crying aloud," and one's view of myth is shaped by whether one seeks to find the silence out of which the cry came or whether one accepts the cry as the one authentic reality. This multidimensional approach provides a greater sense of universalism and applicability of theory than does Scholem's more restricted interpretation. Perhaps just as importantly, Buber may have captured a more accurate picture of hasidism as a movement. A recent study on hasidism by Yaakov Hasdai suggests a "social link between and common origin of the founders of hasidism and mitnagdut."70 The hasidim triumphed not because they championed the ignorant but because their compassionate response to the needs of the community proved more effective than that of their opponents. Buber recognizes this dimension of hasidism: its human concern born in the mythic evocation of a moment of meeting.

306

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1.

See Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1946), pp. 325-50.

2.

Gershom G. Scholem, "Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism," in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, trans. Michael A. Meyer (New York: Schocken, 1971), pp. 228-50.

3.

Ibid., p. 247.

4.

See Joseph Dan, "Hasidism: The Third Century," [Hebrew] World Union of Jewish Studies Newsletter, 29 (1989), pp. 2942.

5.

Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 46.

6.

Ibid., p . 16.

7.

Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), pp. 147-48.

8.

See Laurence J. Silberstein, Martin Buber's Social and Religious Thought: Alienation and the Quest For Meaning (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 65; compare the discussions on pp. 10-11, 53-70.

MYTH AS LANGUAGE 9.

307

Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Early Years, 1878-1923 (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 304-18.

10. Gershom G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea, pp. 34-35, discusses Rabbi Israel's messianic sayings; suggests why those sayings provide the true data of hasidism (p. 248); and records the conversation between Scholem and Buber on the Rizhiner (p. 250). The entire essay, "Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism," is of great interest and has been reprinted in Judah Goldin, ed., The Jewish Expression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 397-418. 11. Moshe Idel discusses this story and its variants in his Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 270-71, 397 n. 96. Gershom Scholem, as Idel notes, credits Shmuel Yosef Agnon with the story: see his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 350; compare Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Sefer, Sofer, Vesippur [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1978), p. 349. Compare Yoav Elstein in his Maaseh Hoshev: Studies in Hasidic Tales (Jerusalem: n.p., 1983), pp. 54-57. 12. Idel, Kabbalah. 13. See Scholem, "Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism," p. 250; perhaps Buber's lack of understanding stems from the very nature of the Rizhiner that appeals to Scholem.

308

MYTH AS LANGUAGE Scholem characterizes this teacher as "nothing but another Jacob Frank who has achieved the miracle of remaining an orthodox Jew" (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 337), Since Buber seeks to uncover genuine Jewish myth and "understands" as authentic only that which points to true I-You encounter, he clearly would find the incipient Frankism of the Rizhiner outside the realm of his interests. David Biale, in his critical analysis of Gershom Scholem, focuses on the contrast between Buber and Scholem: see the discussion throughout David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); see especially the chapter "Theology, Language, and History," pp. 112-46, reproduced in Harold Bloom, ed., Gershom Scholem (New York: Chelsea House, 1987, pp. 47-55).

14. Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, pp. 61-62. 15. Joseph Dan, The Hasidic Story— Its History and Development [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), pp. 7-24. 16. Steven Kepnes explores Buber's use of language in a perceptive chapter in his forthcoming volume, Interpreting and Narrative: From the Writings of Martin Buber (Indiana University Press, 1991). I appreciate his sharing of insights with me before publication.

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17. Friedman, The Early Years, p. 313. 18. Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), pp. 25-26. 19. Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 76. 20. Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Maurice Friedman (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 15. Buber's language and some of his ideas resemble those of Ernst Cassirer, Language and Mvth, trans. Susanne K. Langer (New York: Harper, 1946), pp. 34-42. 21. Buber, Between Man and Man, p. 15; compare Cassirer, Language and Mvth, pp. 34-26. 22. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. and intro. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's, 1970), p. 151. 23. This difference occurs even though both thinkers seem to be influenced by Cassirer. Scholem follows Cassirer's trust in language and his contention that myth "transforms the spiritual dawn which takes place with the advent of language into an objective fact, and presents it as a cosmogonic process" (Cassirer, Language and Mvth, p. 81). Scholem, like Buber, rejects Cassirer's reduction of myth to a philosophical

310

MYTH AS LANGUAGE concept. On Cassirer and Scholem see Biale, Gershom Scholem, pp. 67-68.

24. Gershom G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. R.J.Zwi Werblowsky and trans. Allan Arkush (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 277-79, 285. 25. Gershom G. Scholem, On The Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken, 1969), pp. 87-117. 26. See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 406-7. 27. On Scholem's view of myth as a gnostic type of knowledge, see Biale, Gershom Scholem, pp. 51-70. 28. Buber, A Believing Humanism: Gleanings, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), pp. 113-14. 29. Biale, Gershom Scholem, pp. 125-27. 30. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 22-23. 31. Ibid., p. 269; in the footnote here (p. 412n.77) Scholem compares the kabbalistic view with Schelling's philosophy. 32. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, p. 226.

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33. See the discussion in Friedman, The Early Years, p. 315. 34 . Ibid., p . 317. 35. See Biale, Gershom Scholem, pp. 115-18. 36. See Dan, The Hasidic Story, pp. 132-58. For good background material see Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (New York: Horizon, 1956); Arthur Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav (New York: Schocken, 1981); Yehudit Kuk, Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav: Comments on His Stories [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Gersht Institute, 1973); Mendel Piekarz, Studies in Braslav Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: n.p., 1972); Joseph Weiss, Studies in Bratzlav Hassidism (sic) [Hebrew], ed., Mendel Piekarz (Jerusalem: n.p., 1974). 37. Green, Tormented Master, p. 368. 38. See Nahman ben Simhah of Bratzlav, Sefer Ha Middot [Hebrew] (New York: n.p., 1976) pp. 91, 200, 269, and compare his Likutei MoHaRaN [Hebrew] (New York: n.p., 1969), 1:1; and his Sippurei Maasivot [Hebrew] (New York: n.p., 1969); Piekarz, Studies, pp. 9495; see also his "The Concept of the Tale in Hasidism Generally and in Braslav Hasidism in Particular," pp. 83131, especially pp. 108-22. See Arnold Band, ed. and trans., Rabbi Nahman: The Tales (New York: Paulist

312

MYTH AS LANGUAGE Press, 1978), p. 307; see also pp. 133ff., 308.

39. See Dan, Gershom Scholem, pp. 318-19. 40. See Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, 55-61. 41. See Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 273-86; On the Kabbalah, passim; and The Messianic Idea, pp. 4348, 186-96. 42. Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, p. 285; see the extended study of this story in Dan, The Hasidic Story, pp. 132-44. 43. Ibid., p. 287. 44. Band, Nahman of Bratslav, p. 55. 45. Yoav Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess: A Structural Analysis of the First Tale by Rabbi Nachman of Braslav [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1984); see pp. 226-28; Compare Weiss, pp. 141-43. 46. See Dan's preface in Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, p. xv, and Scholem, The Messianic Idea, pp. 238, 247. 47. Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nahman, pp. 95-113; compare the telling of the tale in Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, pp. 193209; see the lucid rendering of the story into Hebrew in Kuk, pp. 81-95, and her penetrating analysis of its possible meanings on pp. 97-108.

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48. See the discussion in Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, pp. 315-16. 49. See the various discussions throughout Kuk, pp. 97-108, 279-80 (these pages make the connection of the symbolism in the story with the land of Israel and the Jewish exile explicit), and in Weiss, pp. 161-63. 50. See especially Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, "Man's Relation to God and World in Buber's Rendering of The Hasidic Teaching," in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XII, Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds. (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1967), pp. 403-34. 51. For this discussion, the summary of Rabbi Nahman's original tale, see Friedman, The Early Years, pp. 102-5; see Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, pp. 71-94. The story appears in Band, Nahman of Bratslav, pp. 141-61; see also Kuk, pp. 181-203, 265-68. 52. Band's comments reveal the mystical allusions in the story as an allegory about belief in God; see Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, pp. 309-10; for criticism of Buber see Scholem, The Messianic Idea, pp. 240-42. 53. See Kuk, pp. 201-3.

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54. Weiss, pp. 109-49, particularly pp. 12425. 55. The difference may come from the fact that the narrative about Rabbi Nahman's journey originally appeared in Buber's survey of the idea of Zionism. Nevertheless, Buber eventually included the tale in his collection of Rabbi Nahman's tales and so must have seen a relationship between them: see Martin Buber, On Zion: The History of an Idea, trans. Stanley Godman (New York: Schocken, 1973), pp. 89-108; The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, pp. 179-214. 56. Green, Tormented Master, p. 27. 57. See Joseph Dan, ed., The Hasidic Novella [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1966), pp. 187-88; the story as presented here differs in several specific cases from Buber's rendition. 58. Scholem, The Messianic Idea, p. 202. 59. Thus Buber misrepresents Nahman's vacillation from a condition of spiritual exaltation to one of "katnut," or spiritual descent; compare the story in Dan, pp. 152-55, with Buber's version in The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 195. 60. Buber, Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 214.

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315

61. Meir Urian, In The Circle of Hassidism and in the Paths of Our Time [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1977), pp. 7980. 62. Ibid., p. 179; see his entire essay, "The Neutralization of the Messianic Element in Early Hasidism," pp. 176-202. Compare Dan and Band in Nahman of Bratzlav. 63. Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 44. 64. Band, Nahman of Bratslav, p. 43. 65.

See Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, pp. 49-58; Band, Nahman of Bratzlav, pp. 133-38, 307-8.

66. In some translations the "he" who cries out refers to the rebbe; in others, to the father. 67. See Yoav Elstein's discussion of a similar conflict in a tale told about the Baal Shem Tov in Maaseh Hoshev, pp. 20 - 2 2 .

68. 69.

See Weiss, pp. 155-56. Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 36.

70. Yaakov Hasdai, "The Origins of the Conflict Between Hasidim and Mitnagdim," in Bezalel Safran, Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation?. Harvard University

316

MYTH AS LANGUAGE Center for Jewish Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 2745; the cited sentence appears on p. 44.

Chapter 8 Hasidism And Modernity

THE APPEAL OF HASIDISM TODAY

Buber shows how the message of hasidic stories confronts the problems of modernity. For him, the universal meaning of hasidism appeals to all people by giving evidence of how people today can live in I-You relationship. Buber's retelling of the older tradition accentuates this potential within it. Despite this new presentation, however, Buber's additions merge almost imperceptibly with the sources he uses. Novelist Meyer Levin comments that "the interpolations of Martin Buber have seemed so just as to become an integral part of the myth."l That statement, however, may miss the real point. Buber's telling of the stories self-consciously illuminates the mythical elements in hasidism. The original stories by themselves often seem oriented to more modest goals. They seek to reinforce communal structures, to oppose legalistic Judaism, and to attract new disciples. 317

318 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY Buber knowingly reshapes the stories to reveal their inherent but often latent purpose. He contends that hasidism responds to the great challenges modernity placed before modern people, Jews and non-Jews alike. His mythicization of hasidic stories follows from his theory of myth. Buber introduces his second volume of interpretations of hasidism by commenting on his conviction of hasidism's importance "for Jews, Christians, and other men, and at this particular hour more important than ever before."2 Moderns face a peculiar crisis: a crisis of religious belief and a crisis of hope. After the collapse of traditional systems of faith, they search for a living religious life that seems somehow beyond their reach. Hasidism responds to that challenge by recognizing the challenge and the crisis as a reality. Buber criticizes the older Jewish leaders for seeking to respond to new threats with antiquated weapons. They issue pronouncements against anti-traditionalism. They forbid reading modern books or engaging in discussion with "heretics." They define the modern world as an evil temptation. Such strategies merely perpetuate ancient ways; they do not renew the life of the Jewish people. Hasidism goes beyond rabbinic Judaism because it recognizes the need of the times. For Buber, only a new Jewish religiosity can restore the vitality that modernity saps from the veins of traditional Judaism. An inner transformation of Judaism alone can avert the threats being launched against Jewish religion. Hasidism contributes a

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 319 realistic appraisal of the challenges Judaism faced while rabbinic leaders avert their eyes and refuse to see the magnitude of the attacks waged against them.3 Buber notes two major personalities whose lives and thought represent the threat of modernity to Judaism: Baruch Spinoza, both the first modern philosopher and the last of the medievals, and Sabbetai Zevi, the Turkish Jew whose messianic claims stirred and confounded world Jewry.4 Spinoza exemplifies the modern challenge to belief. His philosophy God strips divinity of its ability to communicate with humanity. Spinoza attempted to overcome the Cartesian dualism between mind and body but, Buber suggests, fell into a greater trap: that of locating eternal reality outside of the concrete lived moment of humanity. Buber sees hasidism as responding to that challenge with a new statement of God's pervasiveness. God indeed pervades the world but not as an absolute and inaccessible power. God's presence promises that any moment may become a sacred moment. For hasidism, Buber claims, the idea of God's eternal reality means that "the concrete world of this moment of personal existence" is always "ready to be a sacrament...."5 Spinoza offers an "ethics" of abstraction and distance from human reality. Hasidism responds with an ethics of daily involvement. Threatened by the view of a God who unifies reality only by removing it from human existence, modern Jews turn to the world affirming ethics of hasidism. Buber testifies that this ethics

320 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY drew him to hasidism even before he realized it. He notes his early "premonition" that no matter how he resisted, "I was inescapably destined to love the world."6 Buber prepared his volumes on hasidism for Jews and non-Jews who struggle with the same premonition and for whom hasidism may also prove a solace. Some Christians take exception to such "solace" offered by a Jew. They feel secure in a truth that offers what appears to them a more enduring comfort. Buber scandalizes such Christians even further by contending that Jews understand Jesus "from within" better than "the peoples submissive to him."7 Buber intends no disrespect. Instead, he expresses a Jewish conception of the modern dilemma. Jews confront a world in which redemption seems impossible. Messianic heroes inevitably lead their followers into disaster. How can a modern Jew live in a patently unredeemed world holding fast to hope when traditional messianism appears bankrupt and corrupt? The experience of world Jewry with the messianic debacle of Sabbetai Zevi in the seventeenth century has left Jews wary of religious answers to social and political problems. Gershom Scholem suggests that the Sabbatian messianic movement "helped pave the way" for Jewish Enlightenment and the reform movement in Judaism in the nineteenth century.8 Despite this continuity, however, Buber is correct in suggesting that new Jewish movements could not use messianism as their models. They learned from the failure of Sabbetai Zevi that messianism leads to

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 321 disaster. Buber traces the false messiah's transition from "honest self-assurance into a pretended one" that "ended in apostasy."9 Jews had accepted the "false messiah" as a sign of divine concern. When that sign proved false, it appeared that God had proved equally false. Bereft of trust, many Jews abandoned hope. No longer trusting in a heroic messianic figure to redeem them and the world, they despaired of themselves and their future. Buber suggests that hasidism solves the problem raised by failed messianic heroes by pointing to the redemptive community rather than a redemptive person. Hasidism trusts that Jewish history does not require an extraordinary intervention by God to bring redemption. The hasidic message of redemption involves all people working together as partners in the work of salvation. While the Sabbatian movement focused on the personality of Sabbetai Zevi and his personal biography, hasidism emphasizes a chain of redemptive moments in the life of the community.10 Hasidism's answer to messianism, like its answer to Spinoza, solves a modern dilemma.

REVIVING JEWISH RELIGION

Buber's retelling of hasidic myth evokes its transformative power. Sometimes his versions of these stories differ from the original tale precisely because his make the

322 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY myth of I and You so clear. Hasidic tradition delights in recording the hostility with which the Baal Shem Tov's brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershom, initially misunderstood and resisted the message of hasidism, only subsequently to be transformed into an ardent disciple. Describing the self-revelation of the Besht, hasidic sources tell how a nameless disciple of Rabbi Gershom, traveling to his master, was forced to stop at the Besht's inn. Even the piety of the Besht's wife could not relieve his sense of discomfort. Compelled by strange circumstances to stay the Sabbath with the Besht, he discovered the Besht's secret and became the emissary of the Besht to the "sect of the Great Hasidim."11 Buber retells this story very differently.12 Buber personalizes the disciple, calling him Rabbi Naftali. Rather than being concerned with halakhic details of Jewish observance, the disciple in Buber's tale struggles to understand the meaning of life. The. delays that send him back to the Besht arouse in him self-doubt and questions about his place in the universe. He looked within, and "it seemed to Rabbi Naftali as if the chaos out of which the world was created was his soul...."13 The Besht exercises his power by curing this spiritual malaise. He enables Rabbi Naftali to make peace with the world and himself. By the end of his confrontation with the hasidic leader, "he knew the man and the goal of the six days (of creation)."14 Buber's story echoes the searching and wondering found in the

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 323 original but expresses it in terms of human life rather than in terms of Jewish practice. While some hasidic tales focus on the individual's search for religious life, other stories reconstruct the ideal Jewish community. A strange account of the Besht's failure to save a group of Jews martyred for their faith evokes the social dimension of hasidic myth.15 The tale relates that Rabbi David of Korostyshev fled to the Besht, telling him that certain Jews lay under the charge of a blood libel. The Besht assured him that they would be saved, but instead they were martyred. In anger, the Besht appealed to the dead heroes to exact revenge against their enemies. The martyrs asked indulgence since they prefer death to life. Even in their past life, they explained, they had been touched by the "evil inclination" since it had "touched our thoughts just a hair." The sufferings engendered by this taint of evil outweigh all possible human sufferings. Were they to be reborn, they might sin even more grievously and thus suffer even more punishment. Although the Besht did not succeed in saving the lives of the martyrs, the story succeeds in binding them to an eternal, invisible, and powerful community. Both the martyrs and those who read about them accept the necessity and even the value of their deaths. They share a negative evaluation of this world of trial. They acknowledge a common struggle against the evil inclination. These values transcend time and place. They unite the hasidim

324 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY despite the separations imposed on them by historical events. Buber changes the emphasis in this story as he retells it by adding a prologue and epilogue. He informs the reader that Rabbi David "had begun a book which told how one could serve God with his life." He fled from the martyrs because they sought to sanctify God with their deaths, not with their lives. The incident taught him the difficulty of sanctifying God in life rather than death, and after it he "did not complete his book."16 What changed his mind? As Buber presents the dialogue with the martyrs, the sin caused by the evil inclination takes on concrete form. The martyrs had allowed the evil inclination to touch them and "force our spirits to bow." They fear to return to earth since they must "return to the world where we have no place in which to rejoice in the Lord, and where we breathe an air which is not the Lord's." In such a place not only can they not serve God with their lives, but the temptation to bow their spirits grows even greater.17 The martyrs appear in this version as protoZionists, restless with their exilic condition, desirous of their own land and free air as the precondition of religious living. The problem of Jewish life lies not in serving God but in creating a space within which to serve God joyously. The communal task— in fact, the Zionist task— takes precedence over the individual's private quest. After learning this about the martyrs, Rabbi David must abandon his self-appointed task. One fulfills the human

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 325 task neither by submission to life nor by submission to death. A person must choose to change the conditions of living even before choosing how to live or die. Buber's retelling of hasidic tales captures not only their view of religious life and communal ideal but also their model of personhood. Many modern commentators on hasidism focus on its goals, its stories, and its values even while recognizing the inadequate representation of those goals and values in actual hasidic communities. The ideas themselves lead to an ethics that encourages changing the conditions of human life. The ethics of hasidism demands an altruism that helps Jews diagnose their own limitations and change their lives.18 Folklorist Pinchas Sadeh presents a story culled from an early twentieth century collection that illustrates this view of hasidism. The story concerns the Baal Shem Tov, a rich Jew, a poor but pious man who always recites King David's psalms, and King David himself.19 According to this tale, a certain wealthy Jew observed all the laws commanded meticulously. After completing a particularly arduous commandment, the rich Jew celebrated with a great feast to which he invited rich and poor alike. One guest was a poor Jew who served as water drawer, distinguished only by his recital of the psalms of David. When the bread was distributed, the poor man could not restrain himself and ate immediately. The rich man, outraged that both the scholars present and even the Torah itself had been disgraced by

326 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY this breach of Jewish law, rebuked the poor man so that he left the house in shame. Although the rich man forgot about the incident, his normal study of Jewish law left him restless that night. Leaving his home, he found himself lost in a wilderness until finally he came to a great mansion. There he encountered David the King, arguing with none other than the Baal Shem Tov. They discussed the rich man's case— King David demanding the death penalty for having insulted one who recited David's psalms. The Besht made a better argument: who would gain from the rich man's death? Would it not be better to have him summon everyone to a great feast and make a public apology? The rich man acts on that last proposal and thereby saves his own life. The dynamics of the plot depend on the inability of communal life to approximate the ideals of hasidism. The point seems to be that while the rich often flout the ethical vision of hasidic morality, that morality prevails, at least in heaven. The rich will learn the error of their ways. If they continue to prevail, they do so in hopes of their reformation. The ideal remains powerful even when disconfirmed by general practice. Heaven, at least, takes the part of the poor and oppressed. Those who affirm a legalistic religion eventually discover its inadequacy to protect them. Those who insult the defenseless may seem to escape punishment. They will nonetheless apologize and recognize the evil of their ways.

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 327 Buber transforms this story into another example of mythic evocation of I-Thou meeting.20 As might be anticipated, Buber ignores all references to traditional Jewish law. The rich man is flawed by his impatient nature, his thoughtlessness, and his "noisy being." He insults the waterdrawer merely for being slow in his task, not for infringing on traditional custom. Buber also changes the emphasis of the Besht's defense of the rich man. David, the Besht argues, should know the heart of those who sin since he, too, sinned and found forgiveness. David should recognize the possibility of transcending one's nature since the psalms are "the diamond bridge which leads upward out of the valley of depravity to the heart of God." Buber's most important change of the story lies in a continuing emphasis on human meeting. The Baal Shem, he contends, knew about the rich man's troubled life and "loved him from afar" since he recognized the potential hidden by his externally gruff nature. The rich man, for example, loved and honored the psalm singer because "It seemed to him as if there lived in the song of the man the stillness which so seldom visited him." The Baal Shem wins from King David not an alternative punishment but an acknowledgment of the importance of forgiveness. He gains that victory by reminding the King: "When your song took me by the hand, I forgot justice, and when it smiled at me, all opposition disappeared within me." That statement creates a bond of human meeting out of which "there rushed upward a great movement as when a mystery fulfills itself

328 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY and then sinks down." When two souls understand each other so well that one can help the other see itself, then redemption begins. Buber does not need to emphasize that ethics triumphs eventually. Instead, he evokes several moments of human meeting that are left incomplete. The Besht's meeting with the rich man and the rich man's reaching out to the psalm-singer never reach fulfillment. Through the meeting of the Besht and King David, however, both find their meaning. Buber intimates that this myth of the ideal flows from the mystery of human meeting.

YOAV ELSTEIN'S CRITIQUE OP BUBER The previous chapter discussed how Gershom Scholem challenged Buber's accuracy as a historian of Jewish mysticism. Yoav Elstein, a more recent writer, informed by both Scholem and by non-Jewish students of myth like Mircea Eliade, the well known historian of religions, criticizes Buber's understanding of the phenomenon of myth. Following Eliade, Elstein understands myth as a recreation of primal time and hasidic stories as reverberations of eternal themes and continually recurring events. He denies that the stories tell about a single historical act. While a hasidic tale appears to describe an event that occurred once in human history, it really celebrates a "metaphysical act," that is, an event occurring on a cosmic level, echoed by

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 329 repeated events but not to be identified with any of them. Each apparent "historical event" actually approximates and illustrates an ideal event that is not physical but metaphysical. When Elstein studies a hasidic story, he traces its plot and themes as they are repeated throughout Jewish writings. While in practice he emphasizes these Jewish echoes in the hasidic story, he explicitly claims that the events described occur "to all people at all times."21 Unlike Scholem, who criticizes Buber from an unsympathetic vantage point, Elstein sympathetically challenges Buber's reading of hasidic myths. Elstein declares that he has no wish to enter into the debate between the "two mountains" of Scholem and Buber and implies that, like Buber, he considers hasidic tales a source of illumination of hasidic thinking. He often supplies Buber's rendition of certain tales in his footnotes.22 While he rarely explores the differences between his analysis of the original stories and Buber's, those differences cannot be ignored. If myth transmits a metaphysical message by pointing to the ongoing patterns that determine human existence, then Buber's search for an event is misguided. Deciding between Elstein and Buber entails looking at how each presents hasidic stories and measuring that presentation by Buber's own standard. Buber's major program in presenting hasidic myth is oriented to that goal. He retells hasidic tales because they testify to the "overpowering objective

330 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY reality ... of the exemplary lives." He seeks to show that "the teaching is there that one may learn it and the way that one may walk on it." His success must be judged by whether or not he conveys "the stammering of inspired witnesses." If Buber offers a more compelling rendition of that stammering than Elstein, then his approach offers an equal, if not superior, opportunity for moderns to appreciate and learn from hasidism.23 The next section shows how Buber sought to fulfill this task and then asks whether Elstein's criticism actually refutes Buber's attempt.

THE MYTH OF ETERNAL RETURN Buber shares with other theorists the contention that myth points people toward their selfhood, that it provides direction and meaning. He differs from many of them in his view of the mechanism by which it achieves this end. Modern Jews often seek a "return" to self. Students of modern Jewish life study the phenomenon of the "baal teshuva," the Jew who rejects a secularized modernity and embraces traditionalism.24 Buber recognizes this aspect of hasidic stories: they interpret the meaning of return to Judaism and suggest a way of return. His interpretation of this motif, however, differs considerably from that of other commentators on hasidism and highlights the distinctiveness of his own theory about mythic meaning.

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 331

Elstein disagrees and considers hasidic myth exemplary of an "eternal" way. He claims that hasidic tales recapitulate other stories and echo traditional themes. Buber, by contrast, thinks that hasidic myth awakens a Jew to the moment of decision calling for an affirmation of human life. Buber thinks of Jewish "rebirth" as a renewed opportunity for human meeting, not the re-enactment of a primal event.25 Both Buber and Elstein agree that hasidic stories echo past events. Elstein, however, thinks of that echoing as a replication of some "eternal" event that lies outside of time and space. While Buber insists that myth points back to a historical moment, Elstein claims that it points to basic structures of human life that are always present in human society, even if not always recognized. The theme of return to a truth not previously recognized occurs often in hasidic tales. Both Buber and Elstein recognize the theme but treat it differently. Buber points to the continual accessibility of I-You meeting. The Besht, according to Buber, chooses an eternal cycle of rebirth as his appropriate task. The tales of the Besht recapitulate earlier motifs and stories because they point, as do those stories, to the same I-You reality. Elstein, by contrast, interprets these hasidic tales as re-enactments of biblical stories of Joseph, David, and Solomon. He suggests that while appearances change, reality remains the same.26 The stories are myths not because they recapitulate the

332 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY Bible but because they use biblical motifs to suggest that what happened once upon a time continually reoccurs. Elstein insists that despite the folktale-like appearance of the narratives, they address a different question. Plot and character give way to theme and motif. The story exists not to entertain by relating a unique event but to demonstrate those patterns set in earliest times that still "apply to every man at all times." Elstein suggests that the stories are therefore metaphysical, not merely historical. They make an eternal pattern manifest in a particular time and place.27 Hasidic stories represent a Jewish version of a universal myth: history does not progress; life repeats itself by exemplifying an unchanging cycle. Arnold Band, a literary critic and scholar of hasidism, analyzes an important tale about the Besht that seems to confirm Elstein's theory. Band points to the first story describing a confrontation between the Besht and the powers of evil as an example of how an apparent folktale actually recapitulates themes drawn from throughout Jewish literature.28 The story begins with the Besht's youth, as his dying father passes on to the boy a legacy of faith and hope. As the Besht matures, however, he appears an unruly, untalented child, fit only for menial jobs. One such job entails leading children from their homes to the school, the bethhamidrash. He fulfills this task, however, with great joy and power. He teaches the children to sing to God, and their song

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 333 "rises more sweetly than the sacrificial smoke from the Jerusalem Temple." The text next inserts a verse from the Book of Job: "Then Satan came also among them." The story uses the biblical verse to suggest that the events of the Besht's life parallel previous mythic narratives. The tale proceeds to explain how Satan took action against the Besht to prevent the children's songs from ascending on high. According to the story, the devil "transformed himself into a gentile sorcerer" with the power to become a werewolf. In this guise he frightened the children and prevented them from continuing their studies. The cessation of their singing recapitulates the historical destruction of the "continual offering ascending to God" of the Jerusalem Temple. The Besht, at first daunted, recalls his father's instruction not to fear anything since God is with him and decides to "fight with the beast and kill it in the name of God." He runs to the werewolf, hits it on the forehead, and kills it. The next morning, instead of an animal, people find the corpse of the gentile sorcerer lying on the ground. The story picks up immediately with the next stage in the Besht's career: the Besht next becomes the watchman of the beth-hamidrash. Band identifies the mythic elements in the story with traditional Jewish themes. Like David battling Goliath with merely a slingshot, the Besht appears as an unlikely hero using song and faith against a powerful

334 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY adversary who commands an arsenal of magic. Like Joseph, misunderstood and maligned by those of an alien culture, he succeeds where normal leadership fails. The parallel with Job explains one of the puzzling aspects of the tale. While Satan starts the action, the ending ignores him. The demonic symbolizes the eternal possibility that evil interferes with the smooth functioning of piety. The resolution of the problem, however, remains fully human. As in the story of Job, Satan falls out of the story, thereby suggesting the purely symbolic nature of this personification of evil. By the tale's end the werewolf is but a gentile sorcerer.29 The supernaturalistic and magical elements of the story pale beside the exaltation of the hero's faithfulness. Finally, Band suggests that the contest between the Besht and Satan anticipates a climactic struggle between good and evil. The story envisions a messianic battle won by the power of good, symbolized by the Besht. Oddly, however, this decisive victory fails to lead either to a messianic fulfillment or to an explanation of why such fulfillment never occurs. Band points out the problems with the story as pure narrative. The story has no satisfactory conclusion. The Besht remains as unappreciated after his confrontation with the werewolf as before. The machinations of the devil continue unabated. The Besht's victory wins no enduring triumph. The story never describes the children's return to their singing and moves without pause to another incident in the

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 335 Besht's life. While flaws in a folktale, these defects are irrelevant to a mythic tale. As myth, the story merely echoes eternal themes. It need not advance to a climax, provide a resolution, or describe the consequences of its narrative. On one level the tale does seem to exhibit folk elements. On another level, however, these elements are merely outward disguises. Underneath the folk form lies the eternal message of myth that surfaces again and again. Thus the story takes place on two levels. On one level the Besht vanquishes a human enemy. On the other level the Besht replays the role of ancient Israel's great liberators, of whom David is the primary example. The enigmatic nature of the story signals to the initiated its real meaning. Band thinks that readers discover "two categories of knowledge and the means of achieving both of them."30

BUBER'S VERSION OF "THE WEREWOLF"

Buber's telling of this story begins with a prologue-like account of the Besht's legacy from his father. The Besht's father, before dying, informs his son of his destiny as a Jewish leader. The Besht, his father tells him, will struggle with evil at every stage in his career but need have no fear of evil. Despite this prologue Buber titles this chapter "The Werewolf," focusing on the Besht's first encounter with Satan. Indeed, Buber intimates that such encounters

336 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY characterize the Besht's entire life. The Besht's father warns him not only that he should trust in God but also that "the Adversary will confront (you) in the beginning, at the turning, and at the fulfillment."31 Buber describes the process by which the Besht discovers his own function in the world. The Besht lives in tension with the normative Jewish tradition of his time. He rejects formalized learning and flees from the schoolhouse to the world of nature. Buber describes how the Besht grew up with the "speechless modes of the creatures" and recognized a power independent of the learned tradition. Unlike Band, Buber emphasizes the unique aspects of the Besht's career. He refuses to see the Besht as a mirror or echo of earlier traditions but rather as a singular individual, groping toward a meeting between an I and a You. The Besht's function as a helper conducting children to school represents a further stage in his development. He learns to communicate not only with nature but also with children. He conveys the flame of religious fervor to his charges, teaching them to sing to God of their joy in living. In so doing, he enables them to transcend the limits of their daily living. His influence breaks "through the thick smoke of misery and confusion that presses down on earth." Buber attributes this success to the Besht's ability to affirm the children as unique individuals with a value beyond their routine existence. Buber interprets the demonic response to this I-You meeting

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 337 differently from his sources. Those sources attribute Satan's concern to the fact that when children learn Jewish lore (torah), heaven rejoices. Buber, however, records that the Adversary "swelled up with disquietude and hatred," complaining that with such self-acceptance among humanity he would lose his function. I-You meeting threatens to sanctify everyday life; demonic success lies in desanctifying that life. To reestablish his realm of terror Satan chooses an individual whose life seems bereft of sanctification. While the original tale focuses on aspects of evil within the person whom Satan chooses— he is a gentile and a sorcerer— Buber stresses that the human being chosen by Satan had been weakened by internal conflict. Buber describes him as a poor charcoal burner, alienated from other people, who when compelled to turn into a werewolf suffers deeply since "his simple heart writhed under the bitter compulsion." This werewolf symbolizes the cessation of I-You meeting, just as the singing children had symbolized its genesis. Faced with this challenge, the Besht, according to Buber, remembered his father's last words. Buber asserts that "now for the first time" he knew the significance of his Adversary and how, at the very beginning, he must confront the threat to true dialogue arising from alienation. As the story develops, Buber reconstructs the contest between the Besht and the werewolf as a psychological event.

338 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY The Besht unites himself with the werewolf penetrating its very soul. During the fight "It seemed to him as if he were going farther and farther" into the werewolf. Band, probably correctly, sees the story as a messianic contest. Buber, however, understands the victory psychologically. The Besht wins by converting the coal burner's soul. When the coal burner is found dead, Buber reports, "Those who came across him were astonished by the great peacefulness of his countenance." The Besht liberates the coal burner from his unhappy compulsion so that he can attain reconciliation. Buber stresses the benefit the Besht provides his erstwhile enemy. The success of an I-You meeting presages not social and political messianism but self­ reconciliation. The story points to the moment at which meetings between an I and a You creates a surprising peace, the peace of self-affirmation despite the tribulations of life. This conclusion appears positive and unambiguous. Buber, however, adds a pessimistic note. From this moment on, he remarks, "the boys forgot their singing and began to resemble their fathers and their fathers' fathers." This rendition honestly transmits the ambiguity of the original tale. This time, however, the focus shifts from an unfulfilled messianism to the transiency of I-You meeting. The Besht discovers the flaw in his victory. He can protect the children from the threat from without but not from the threat from within. Normal routine, no less than abnormal

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 339 morbidity, saps the strength of I-You affirmation of the human self. The lack of closure that Buber finds in the tale conveys his understanding of I-You meeting as continual renewal, not eternal repetition of primal patterns. In this sphere persons discover through meeting that their lives have meaning as "the ever-renewed preparation and hallowing" necessary to stimulate a lived moment of response. The Besht, for example, discovers that his is "not the hour of redemption, but of a renewal." In this first encounter with Satan the Besht learns purpose of his existence: he is to proceed through life "being addressed and answering, addressing and receiving answer." The continuing stories chart his progress through these dialogues.32 Buber's interpretation of this story as myth differs radically from Band's. Unlike Band, he refuses to divide the story into an external and an internal meaning, a superficial tale for the folk and an esoteric tale for the elite. By replacing esotericism with a lesson for modern life, Buber creates out of his sources a genuine myth of the I and the Thou.

PURIFICATION FROM POLLUTION

Buber's approach unravels aspects of the story that lie outside Elstein's definition of myth. One central hasidic concern focuses on ritual and magic. Buber accepts the challenge of showing how this apparently

340 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY supernaturalistic and unrealistic aspect of hasidic myth actually responds to universal human concerns. Many cultures establish rituals to they dispel demons and other spirits and thereby ensure prosperity and fertility. Sometimes these rituals initiate a struggle against the demons; sometimes they provide sympathetic magic imitating the motions of a flock or of sowing a field; often the rituals entail a public ceremony with bells and magical incantations.33 Hasidism includes references to such events. In one hasidic tale the Besht seems to reenact a purification ceremony.34 When pollution increased in the world, the Baal Shem set out to defeat it in concert with another hasid and a certain ignorant but devout shepherd called Moses. The story describes the shepherd's devotion in two different ways. At first, as the Baal Shem Tov observes him, the shepherd addresses God in a simple prayer: I cannot serve you as you need to be served, but if you had a flock, I would shepherd it for free. This peasant's prayer resembles other hasidic stories that emphasize the value of sincerity rather than form as the mark of true worship. A second description, however, seems far stranger and closer to mythic images. On approaching Moses, the Baal Shem Tov notes how he serves God simply by leaping about and crying out to God. The shepherd's piety, on this account, consists of magical ritual, of a "homeopathic" action: an action imitating natural forces undertaken to ensure fertility and prosperity. Theorists studying this part of the story would note its affinities to

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 341 magical rites, popular theurgic customs, and general rituals of purification. Because some taint pollutes the land, agriculture suffers. The magician restores purity and productivity by simulating the action of a fully healthy natural world. The tale moves quickly from this theurgic emphasis to traditional Jewish law and lore. As the story progresses, the Baal Shem Tov teaches the shepherd the Hebrew alphabet, the story of how enemies destroyed God's Temple, and the technique of how certain prayers would help bring redemption. At this point, the story transforms an originally magical myth into a reinforcement of traditional religion. While in its primal form the story exalted folk customs, as a developed tale it cautions against such unconventional practice. Instead of magic, the shepherd must learn the communal forms of devotion. The three leaders learn to merge their talents. Jewish tradition emphasizes that a quorum of three represents the minimum needed for worship. While some prayers do require the presence of one hundred people and others ten, three men constitute the smallest unit of public worship. Public recital of the blessing after meals, for example, begins with such a quorum. When three do not recite such blessings, God's name is profaned.35 Since the number three represents a community, or hayurah, the additional person must participate in the ritual for its effectiveness. When the three do combine their actions, heaven seems responsive to their deeds. At this stage the myth exalts

342 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY communal power. What magic does not accomplish, the united forces of a social order achieves. Tradition succeeds by synthesizing aspects of magic, study, and mysticism. The optimistic note sounded here, however, soon changes to a pessimistic one. The myth reflects a tragic reality: pollution cannot be completely nullified. Messianic fulfillment still lies in the distant future. The tale explains this tragedy by suggesting that the Devil took action against the purification rituals and thwarted the concerted efforts of the three heroes. Satan succeeded in disrupting life by creating a great fire in the neighboring town. The leaders of the city responded by ringing the bells of the town to assemble people to help extinguish the fire. These two elements, fire and bells, often accompany rituals of purification and expiation. They echo the original myth from which the tale emerged, a myth of the riddance of evil by rituals. In the present tale, however, these elements bode disaster. The sounds disturb the performance of the ritual. When the shepherd Moses hears the commotion, he thinks the masters of the flock know he has abandoned his sheep. Fearful for his job, he runs back to the hillsides, and the Baal Shem Tov reluctantly admits defeat. After that defeat he and his companion escape great harm only by dint of their holiness. As in many traditions, so, too, here, the failure to perform ritual magic correctly

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 343 entails danger for the magician. In its developed form, the story concludes by affirming the insufficiency of ritual purification. Some temporary advantage follows these rituals, but Satan grips the world too securely to allow an absolute absolution of pollution. This myth describes a failed ritual and shows why rituals fall into discontinuance: even the most punctilious observance of a ritual cannot reverse the corruption that is humanity's inevitable fate. Buber's rendition of this myth retains its sense of pessimism but illuminates its darkness by an affirmation of I-You meeting. The story no longer entails ritual or magical purification but rather an acceptance of historical destiny. The myth evokes moments of decision during which people meet one another and discover how to convert evil into good. In telling the life of the Baal Shem Tov (but not in his Tales of the Hasidim), he associates this story with the Baal Shem Tov's death. The differences in his telling of the tale show how Buber evokes the mythic power of the stories about hasidic leaders. Buber begins by describing the Baal Shem Tov's struggle against evil generally and against the demonic threat of Jacob Frank's incarnation of the Sabbatian movement in particular. The Besht feels the hand of the demonic angel on his shoulder and knows he must prepare for battle. He turns to his spiritual allies but finds them engaged in equally important duties and releases them to do their own work. Ascending on high

344 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY with his teacher Ahijah the Shilonite, the Besht learns from Elijah that only Moses the shepherd can help him in this struggle.36 The earlier myth focuses on a generalized pollution, on an agricultural dilemma. Buber's myth conveys the weariness of contemporary Jews, the sense that all the old allies have failed and that traditional religious answers no longer satisfy modern needs. The life of the Besht, however, illustrates how one man may continue the fight, seeking the one ally suited for him. Buber, by this touch, emphasizes personal dialogue. The original story focuses on the three Jews needed for a basic quorum; Buber replaces this with the two partners essential for human meeting. He also changes the reasons behind the Besht's actions. They become modern ones: those for immediate human encounter, for transcending established religious institutions, and for affirming personal paths to salvation. As myth, the story evokes the moment in which a person discovers the need to transcend tradition and find a single human partner. After Buber's long introduction the story continues much as in its original version, mentioning the shepherd's simple prayer and his active leaping. Buber, however, avoids advocating traditional religion. The shepherd in this tale does not need to learn the Hebrew alphabet or rehearse Jewish history. According to Buber, the Besht appeals to Moses' love and compassion for God. He "spoke of the solitude of God and of God's presence that is exiled...." The shepherd, moved by love

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 345 of God, seeks to fight the one who seduces people away from God. The Besht then proceeds to "instruct him in battle." The earlier story understands traditional law and lore as the best strategy for combating pollution. Buber focuses on how people become sensitive to the needs of others. He replaces the demand for Jewish solidarity and ritual correctness in the first story with a demand for compassion for other people. Where the original story points to a myth of purification and identifies the means of such purification, Buber points to the myth of an I's meeting with a Thou and concludes that this meeting requires a commonality of sympathy.37 Again, Buber reads the story as myth in his peculiar definition of the term. The story points backwards to an event in human experience: human beings learn how to battle evil through their compassion for others. In the moment of meeting with others, they discover a commonality of need. As in the original tale, so in Buber's: the devil must receive his due. Humanity, at least in this unredeemed world, can never achieve an unmitigated triumph. When the struggle against the devil ensues, the Besht and Moses seem to prevail. In desperation, the demon appeals to God. He rules the temporal world according to his right. God responds "full and overfull with sadness," allowing the demon to revel in its ignorance. The demon then strikes the city with fire, and the bells ring. In Buber's version of the story the shepherd hears the bells and thinks immediately of his flock,

34 6 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY "which had been scattered unprotected over the mountain." Moses turns to his sheep, and the Besht must meet the angel of battle alone. This time, however, the Besht recognizes the angel as a more positive force: the prince of death and of rebirth.38 The myth, as Buber tells it, teaches compassion for the demon no less than for God. The moment belongs to the demon. The audience, together with the Besht, hears the anguish of the demon, sympathizes with its concerns, and turns from hostility to understanding. The myth of the I and the Thou expands beyond compassion for the common other. It includes compassion for the different other. The tale evokes a moment in which the Besht learned to affirm the truth and reality of the "evil one." Still another moment follows the moment of compassion. While victory seems to belong to the demonic, the Besht actually learns otherwise. He discovers his own task in the example of Moses the shepherd. Just as the shepherd leaves the cosmic task to pursue the daily one, so the Besht begins his earthly task again and again. The decision facing the hero forces a choice between the single great battle and the ever different battles that arise from daily tasks. Buber presents the story as an exemplification of the myth of I and Thou, in which each person must meet the challenge of commonplace demands, choosing to face those recurrent tasks rather than expending energy on the one futile struggle. The Besht learns that he must continually renew his activities. The audience re-enacts that

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 347 learning, committing itself to performing the common duties of humanity rather than abandoning them for supernatural rituals that seek to remove impurity in one single blow. Buber takes the raw material of a purification myth and fashions it to express his own insights. Whether or not the story in its original form testifies to moments of decision and their effectiveness, Buber's rendering of it does so. Buber constructs a tale in which readers can discover that the daily challenges they face are no less important than the "grand battle against evil" told in myth. As transmitted, the original tale seems confused and ambivalent. Never fully contented with its popular and magical sources, the tale meanders through traditionalism and the exaltation of community to an unsatisfying conclusion. Buber's myth, however, develops logically and carefully. Each moment leads to the next so that the apparent failure in the end merely confirms the value of I-You meeting as an eternal possibility rather than as a tactic in one great war. Buber's interpretation of the hasidic myth points to its modern possibility: it can teach moderns how to live more fully; the significance of the story transcends its magical or supernatural elements. As in his other interpretations of myth, so, too, in his study of hasidism, Buber sacrifices literal accuracy to allow modern readers an opportunity to find answers to their own questions. Buber's significance lies less as a historian of hasidism than as an author

348 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY whose works show how ancient stories reveal possibilities for contemporary living. Buber honestly conveys the fullness of life and avoids theories of myth that he considers too restricting. That the myth conveying this message owes more to Buber's creativity than to his hasidic sources does not negate its value for contemporary readers.

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 349 NOTES 1.

Meyer Levin, The Golden Mountain (New York: Behrman House, 1932), p. xvi.

2.

Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), p. 22.

3.

Ibid., pp. 40-42.

4.

Buber. "Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi, and the Baal Shem," in his The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, pp. 90-112.

5.

Ibid., p.

97.

6.

Ibid., p.

99.

7.

Ibid., p.

251.

8.

Gershom G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea In Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, trans. Michael A. Meyer (New York: Schocken, 1971), p, 84.

9.

Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism. pp. 109-11.

10. Ibid.. p. 112. 11. See Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz, eds., Shivhei HaBesht: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 28-31.

350 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 12. Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1955), pp. 62-72. 13 . Ibid., p. 68. 14 . Ibid., p. 12. 15. See Ben-Amos and Mintz, pp. 161-63. 16. Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, p p .7 3, 78. 17 . Ibid., p . 77. 18. See, for example, Reuven Bulka, ed., Mystics and Medics: A Comparison of Mystical and Psychotherapeutic Encounters (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1979) , and Mordecai Rotenberg, Dialogue with Deviance: The Hasidic Ethic and the Theory of Social Contraction (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983). 19. Pinchas Sadeh, Sefer HaDimvonot [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1983), pp. 47-48/ 284. 20. Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, pp. 131-38. 21. See Yoav Elstein, Maaseh Hoshev: Studies in Hasidic Tales [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: n.p., 1983), pp. 41-62 and 130-31. 22. See ibid., p. 49.

HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 351 23. Ibid.,

pp. 21-26.

24. See Janet O'Dea Aviad, Return to Judaism: Religious Renewal in Israel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Saul Bernstein, The Renaissance of the Torah Jew (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1985); and Michael Graubart Levin, Journey to Tradition: The Odvssev of a Born-again Jew (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1986. 25. Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, pp. 12-13. 26. Elstein, Maaseh Hoshev, pp. 63-128. 27. Ibid., pp. 130-32. 28. See the story itself in Ben-Amos and Mintz, pp. 11-13, and for analysis in Arnold Band, "The Function of the Enigmatic in Two Hasidic Tales," in Joseph Dan and Frank Talmage, eds., Studies in Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1982), p. 187. 29. Band, in "The Function of the Enigmatic," pp. 190-92. 30 . Ibid.,

p. 193.

31. Buber, "The Werewolf," The Legend of the Baal Shem, pp. 51-55. 32. See Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, pp. 28, 20, 236, 229, 91.

352 HASIDISM AND MODERNITY 33. See Theodor H. Gaster, The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgment of the Classic Work bv Sir James George Frazer (New York: Criterion, 1959), pp. 53-54, 174, 599-609. 34. See Micha Joseph Bin Gorion, "Moses the Shepherd," in his Mimekor Yisrael: Classical Jewish Folktales, ed. Emanuel bin Gorion and trans. I. M. Lask (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 962-63. 35. See Mishnah Berachot 7:1; Babylonian Talmud 45a; Mishna Avot 3:3. 36.

Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, pp. 202-5, and compare Buber, TheOrigin and Meaning of Hasidism, pp.24-112.

37.

Buber, The Legend of 205-7.

38. Ibid., pp. 207-8.

the Baal Shem. pp.

Chapter 9

Evaluating Buber

HASIDISM AMD MYTH

Theorists of comparative mythology draw freely on Buber's work, even though they often misunderstand his intention. Thus Eliade, ffor example, uses one of Buber's tales to emphasize the importance of learning about a culture other than one's own.l The story tells of Rabbi Eisik, son of Yekel of Crakow.2 Rabbi Eisik repeatedly dreamed that a great treasure awaited him under the main bridge of Warsaw. When he told his dream to others in his hometown, they laughed at him. Why should he want to go to Warsaw? His friends in Crakow told him that anything he wanted in Warsaw he could find at home. His family reprimanded him for intending to desert them. Despite all pleas Reb Eisik left home for Warsaw. The promptings of his dream proved more powerful than rational argument. The passion for self-expression urged him to 353

3 5 4 EVALUATING BUBER

seek a higher good than that found in his own home. Once he arrived in Warsaw, Reb Eisik could no longer remain isolated. He came into contact with others who shaped his life. Warsaw boasted numerous bridges. How could he discover the correct one? After careful investigation he settled upon one as the likeliest to harbor his treasure. He took a shovel and went to that bridge intending to dig up his treasure. Unfortunately, he could not proceed as planned. Guards attended the bridge day and night, allowing only authorized persons to approach and scrutinizing passing strangers carefully. Reb Eisik refused to despair and maintained a vigil, hoping that the guards would leave. Soon he became friendly with some of them. They took note of him, shared food with him, and began a conversation. During one conversation a certain captain inquired about his interest in the bridge. Reb Eisik explained about his dream and his hopes for a great treasure. On hearing this explanation, the captain laughed, saying that he too had such a dream. In his dream a voice proclaimed that he would find a treasure under the stove of a certain Eisik ben Yekel in Crakow. The guard scoffed at ever finding that treasure. He declared that half the Jews in Crakow are called Yekel and the other half Eisik, so that he despaired of ever discovering the right house. The guard told Reb Eisik to return home because dreams only bring trouble, never success. Reb Eisik heard the

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story in respectful silence. Reb Eisik took the guard's advice and returned to Crakow, now knowing the location of his treasure. When he looked under the stove, he took the treasure meant for him. How did Reb Eisik use that treasure? He realized that what his friends had told him was true. Anything that could be found in Warsaw could also be found in Crakow— anything except Reb Eisik and Reb Yekel. He and his father, the two whose names according to the guard comprise all the Jews of Crakow, make the city unique. Reb Eisik had discovered himself in Warsaw and learned the meaning of his existence in Crakow: he was one of the Jews whose existence identified the place. With that new knowledge in mind he used his treasure to affirm the meaning of his life: he built a house of prayer, which he called "Reb Eisik Reb Yekel's Schul." Reb Eisik returned home and created a synthesis between the old and the new. The treasure which he discovered under his own roof only because he abandoned it supplied the resources for a new religious experience.3 Buber interprets the tale as a reflection of I-You meeting. The I-You meeting between Reb Eisik and the guard in Warsaw teaches him a perspective on his own life. Buber remarks that each person has a distinctive treasure but that the means of finding it may be hidden. The story suggests that self-discovery depends upon a dialogue with others. The myth confirms this: self-discoverv lies in going beyond oneself. The myth recalls the event stimulating Reb Eisik's return to Crakow and

356 EVALUATING BUBER his creation of a new house of prayer. Buber's own treatment of hasidic legend acts as a similar myth. His responsive interpretations of those legends point to the event of human meeting to which they are later responses. A study of Buber as theorist of myth must take this I-You approach to mythic meaning as its point of departure.

MYTH AS COMMUNICATION

Many critics find Buber's ontological conception of myth puzzling.4 Part of the problem arises from Buber's view of myth as communication. Many scholars, for example, consider the Jewish ritual of the Passover a mythic ceremony. Its combination of story, confession, and symbolic action evoke the founding event of Jewish religion.5 Buber's discussion of this ritual, called the Seder, illustrates his understanding of myth as communication. In his chronicle of hasidic history, For The Sake of Heaven, Buber includes a section devoted to "A Seder That Went Wrong."6 Buber's description of this Seder marks its mythic characteristics. Its purpose is "by the might of one's yearning to throw a bridge between that deed which God performed in the liberation from Egypt to that awaited deed of his which as yet has no name."7 The myth of the Exodus recalls an event that humanity shared with God. As Jews recall that event, they prepare for another event parallel to it in their own

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lives. The story Buber tells, however, focuses on myth misunderstood. The Seer of Lublin, according to the story, instructed his disciples in a detailed set of Passover observances. They agreed to follow his instructions to the letter. Despite their good intentions, however, each disciple invariably failed in the attempt. Although Buber notes that "everywhere disturbances had taken place," the narrative records only three of them. Each of the three stands for a particular kind of mythic misunderstanding. In the first and, according to Buber, most crucial misunderstanding, family quarrels disrupted the ceremony. A rivalry between mother and daughter-in-law delayed the beginning of the ritual. Although the ceremonial proceeded according to plan, still "the lost time could not be retrieved."8 The problem here stems from a misunderstanding of the meaning of the ritual. When seen at as a set of actions, as behavioral directives, the Seder had been performed accurately. As an evocation of liberation, however, the Seder demands an atmosphere of freedom. Strict observance of detailed laws alone cannot fulfill the obligation of the ritual. The lack of fellowship, the air of hostility, and the familial tension in the household all impaired the experience of freedom essential to the religious goal of the ceremonial. The Seder went wrong because of a false definition of the ceremony and its purpose. While accomplishing the superficial purpose

358 EVALUATING BUBER of the ritual, those performing it failed to achieve its real purpose. The second disturbance Buber reports apparently seems trivial. The entire Seder went well until its final moment. When the time came to eat the special wafer eaten at the conclusion of the ceremony, "no one could find it."9 Here myth proves its authenticity only when its performance reaches its fulfillment. The myth may be recounted accurately yet still fail. Despite an accurate definition of myth, an assessment of its achievements depends upon studying its consequences. Buber's own concern for the modern meaning of myth represents his effort to avoid losing the special wafer by ignoring the consequences that make the myth a living reality rather than a relic. Buber calls the final disturbance "the strangest report of all." In that Seder everything followed the prescribed pattern. Only one alteration occurred: the leader recited the ritual not in Hebrew but in his native Hungarian. He justified this change by declaring "an account must be communicated in such a manner that all who hear it understand it."10 Buber certainly should approve such a recitation of a mythic ritual. Yet the assumption made in the defense for this ceremonial innovation suggests something with which Buber would not agree. The leader assumes that by translating the ceremony from an ancient language to a vernacular he has accomplished his task of transmitting its meaning.

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Buber's own experience taught him the fallaciousness of that assumption. While he had begun his task of communicating hasidic lore by transforming its antiquated style into modern language, he discovered that the closer he remained to the original tale, the more accurately he transmitted its meaning. Too vernacular a translation may lead to miscommunication of myth. Buber's contribution as theorist of myth depends on his new definition of myth, his insight into the purpose of mythology in human cultures, and his ability to communicate ancient myth to moderns. The next sections evaluate the importance and the limitations of Buber as theorist of myth in these three areas.

BUBER'S DEFINITION OF MYTH

Buber defines myth as a story preserving the memory of an I-You relationship between the divinity and either a human individual or a group of people. This definition contributes to the theory of myth by attacking an uncritical identification of myth and polytheism, by opposing the existentialist ploy of demythologizing mythic tales, and by proposing an explanation for the evolution and change of mythic traditions. The distinctive aspects of myth accordingly lie in its narrative, in its origin in a factual event experienced as a meeting with the divine, and in its function as a transmission of the memory of that meeting. This definition expands the

360 EVALUATING BUBER possibilities for discovering myth in Jewish tradition. Were myth defined by its content alone, it would exclude much of biblical and post-biblical writings. Those defining mythology as stories about the various gods inevitably define the Bible as nonmythological. Buber's definition of myth identifies biblical stories as myth wherever they point backward to an actual event in which the divine and the human meet in genuine relationship. Without further refinement scholars might find it difficult to distinguish between biblical and nonbiblical myths. Rudolf Bultmann responds to this problem by distinguishing biblical myth on the basis of its philosophical ideas. Buber opposes that approach as destroying the distinctiveness of myth. Buber's definition takes its narrative form as essential. Reducing a myth to its ideas, to a vehicle for conveying existential truths, misunderstands the importance of its structure as a story. Buber not only expands the scope of what may count as myth but also refuses to dilute the specific characteristics of the mythic form. Buber recognizes a problem in defining myth as the recollection of a single event. Biblical and post-biblical stories often appear in duplicate or triplicate. The same motif may be transformed as it is retold again and again. The story of Enoch, for example, evolved and changed in the course of centuries. Buber provides an explanation for these changes even in the face of his insistence that they all recall a single event. The event of an I-You meeting occurs

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outside of experience but must be communicated in experiential language. Myths often change their form to communicate their truths more adequately. Sometimes, however, a society or its leaders consider I-You meeting too spontaneous or unpredictable to maintain a stable community. They therefore seek to discourage it. Myths change in response to these fears, and Buber traces this kind of mythic evolution as well as the more positive changes occurring in a tradition. In this way he contributes a method for analyzing the transformation of mythic motifs. While Buber's definition offers a positive program for expanding the scope of myth, for taking its form seriously, and for tracing mythic transformations, it does lack specificity and precision. This problem springs from a difficulty inherent in Buber's presentation of his I-Thou thinking from the beginning. When Buber first presented his "I-Thou" insight, Franz Rosenzweig questioned this aspect of his theory.11 Buber's description of "I-It" relationship seemed too constricted, while the "I-Thou" appeared too broad and inclusive. Since, as Rosenzweig put it, Buber portrayed the "It" as a "cripple," he needed to expand the I-You to fit anything alive in human experience. The "grab-bag" approach to "I-Thou" extended its dimensions so widely that it lost shape and definition. The same criticism applies to Buber's view of myth. Buber defines myth so broadly that reflection on any event experienced as true

362 EVALUATING BUBER meeting falls under that definition. While distinguishing between myth faithful to its original experience and myth already subordinated to religion, Buber never distinguishes between genuine myth and other records of authentic relationships. Going beyond Buber himself, one can note that the cases he studies display a common theme of divine intervention in human life. Abraham Joshua Heschel devotes considerable attention to the question of God's "pathos," by which he means God's passionate feeling for human beings.12 The drama of biblical stories represents the changing pathos, the changing responses of God, to human events. Buber took exception to Heschel's views and focuses more on "the blood and soul of the theomorphous man," that is, on the way people try to identify themselves with God rather than on the way the divine identifies itself with human concerns.13 That focus, however, blurs the distinctiveness of mythic narrative. What distinguishes myth from other stories and legends is its concern with the divine involvement in human affairs.

THE PURPOSE OF JEWISH MYTH

Buber continually judges myths by their effects: do they stimulate new opportunities for I-You meeting, or do they succumb to the temptation of religion and fossilize the memory of a past event? Buber's

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understanding of myth goes beyond that of psychologists and existentialists. Psychologists reduce myths to truths about the human mind. They identify the patterns of thinking and response developed in the human past and recapitulated by each individual. Since psychology discovers these patterns independently of myth, the ancient testimony merely confirms a scientific discovery. Outside of that confirmation myths no longer serve useful functions. Like the Passover Seder that proceeded perfectly until it misplaced the Afikomen, psychology uncovers truths about myth, only to learn that myth itself is dispensable. Existentialist interpretations of myth tend to fall into the same trap. They explain the meaning of myth in terms of truths previously discovered. Reducing myth to propositions about human life makes it a poor substitute for existential philosophy. Existentialist interpretations of myth, like psychological ones, make myth superfluous. For Buber, only myth can stimulate both response and imitation. Buber recognizes that myth in Genesis 1:1-3:24 differs from myth in Exodus or in the Psalms. He explains these differences as consequences of the different events each myth celebrates. Because Buber rejects the view that all myths convey the same message and that myths project an eternal return, his interpretation of diverse myths explored their distinctiveness. The social experiences underlying the stories of Moses complement the personal reality expressed in

364 EVALUATING BUBER

the stories of good and evil. Buber's approach allows him to describe the historically conditioned nature of hasidic myths of cosmic disorder and human reparation of it. Unlike Gershom Scholem and Yoav Elstein, Buber traces the personal and social realities that shaped different trends in hasidic myth. Sometimes persons experience their return to selfhood as a miracle effected by divine power. Sometimes they find their journey back to themselves an ascent through stages of self-knowledge. Sometimes they learn that they must change the structures of society and conditions of human life. Buber uses a different hasidic tale to suggest these possibilities. His approach encourages a flexible rather than dogmatic understanding of different mythic alternatives. Once again, however, Buber's strength hides a weakness. Rosenzweig's criticism of Buber included a concern that he had reduced the number of "primal words" to a false duality. People relate to the world in more than the two ways Buber suggests. They can acknowledge the divine creator and say He-It, and they can speak from their own awareness as creatures and say "We-I."14 Buber's characterization of myth as a record of "I-You" meeting includes too many different kinds of stories under a single rubric and ignores the distinctive purpose of myth. Not only myth but other stories serve the same function of stimulating I-You relationships. Not only mythic memory but historical memory and imaginative, didactic tales fulfill a

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similar purpose. While Buber reminds theorists of myth to look at the consequences of myth, his own definition of those consequences seems rather broad. Looked at from a theoretical perspective, the stories Buber includes as myth serve a far more mundane purpose than that of encouraging I-You living. They serve to preserve and communicate norms of human behavior. This normative function seems more adequately explained by Rosenzweig's category of "We-I." As a society recalls its origins, the experiences that shaped it as a coherent group, it retells those events as narratives filled with supernatural power. The forging of the "We" in the I-We relationship appears as an act of divine grace. Narrowing the function of myth to this normative purpose focuses attention on the characteristic elements of myth. The Genesis stories imply norms of gender-specific activities, of social organization, of economic division of labor. The stories in Exodus supply norms for leadership, for ritual process, and for social identification. The hasidic tales offer their audience a new normative tradition focused on the zaddik. This tradition embraces norms of personal behavior, of political allegiance, and of morality. Buber's contribution to the study of myth suggests the need to take seriously the differences among myths; going beyond Buber by defining the consequence of myth as normative action helps specify those differences even more concretely than Buber himself does.

366 EVALUATING BUBER A DEEPER INSIGHT INTO MYTH

Buber's development as an exponent of Jewish myth reveals an extraordinary aspect of his theory of myth. As his general understanding of the I-You relationship deepened, his ability to transmit and communicate the meaning of myth increased. He insists that the true aim of hasidism was not to continue an ancient kabbalistic tradition, as Scholem suggests, or to point to enduring eternal patterns, as Yoav Elstein thinks, but to aim "toward the revolution of values, toward a new order of rank in which it is not the man who 'knows' the Torah but the man who lives in it, who realizes it in the simple unity of his life that stands in the highest place."15 Following this insight, Buber does not emphasize esoteric doctrines or impose complicated literary structures on the stories he retells. He tries to communicate the myth simply. Even those who doubt whether Buber communicates the full message of hasidic thought testify to his honesty. One critic considers Buber's For the Sake of Heaven a valid and genuine evocation of hasidic life in which his fidelity to his sources leads him farther "than his own personal leanings would have permitted."16 Buber's attention to the sources of hasidism and refusal to reduce the meaning of myth to simply an existentialist, esoteric, or psychological significance allows him to present it honestly.

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Buber's approach to his sources reflects his view of how myth communicates its message. He denies that myths communicate an esoteric idea or theory. Instead, he suggests that myths transmit their message by evoking a life, by projecting the image of human beings in the midst of a lived relationship. He identifies the "stream of mythn-bearing power" within Judaism with stories about human heroes calls forth in response to a summons. He tells these tales to help evoke the reality of that call.17 That approach, however, illustrates what one critic considers a fixation on the phenomenon of presentness.18 Buber's restlessness with "religion" and his fear that institutionalized religious forms would sap the strength of myth leads him to over­ emphasize the importance of the moment. Buber judges the value of the past by its conversion into a present opportunity. Often myth celebrates history or anticipates a future without immediately opening a door or window. While Buber refuses to reduce myth to some other reality, he limits its value to its immediate significance. The most crucial failure attributable to Buber's bias for presentness, already intimated by Gershom Scholem and his disciples, lies in his avoidance of the esoteric philosophy included in mystical myths. Buber correctly realizes that the theoretical aspect of hasidic myths represents a legacy from an older kabbalah and conveys a secret message about a mysterious future. In neither case for Buber does the mystical theory advance the

368 EVALUATING BUBER cause of I-You meeting in the present. That lack, however, may not in and of itself mean that the story has abandoned its mythic purpose. Certainly theorists of myth should applaud the honesty and nonreductionism that Buber's approach to myth inspires. They should, however, also question the appropriateness of such a simple and straightforward immediacy. Myth often contains hints and signs that draw attention not to the here and now but to an esoteric past or a hidden future. Elements within a myth act as stimuli pointing beyond the story itself to its significance. Buber's self-conscious selection of stories limits the applicability of his theory of myth. Israeli scholar Mendel Piekarz notes, that for Rabbi Nahman popular stories provide "an external expression of exalted spiritual realities." Nahman told stories to provide his listeners with hints of such realities, to indicate a truth beyond the literal tale being told.19 Buber seems oblivious to this dimension of the mythic tale. Students of myth should learn from Buber to pay attention to the substance of the myth, to take its literal meaning and form as a point of departure. They should not ignore indications of esoteric meaning, of myth as a signal of transcendence, as something other than an invitation to I-You relationship. The message communicated takes the shape of myth because myth makers seek to hint at special meaning, at a hidden purpose. The structure and vocabulary of myth point its readers to an esoteric realm of reality that does not necessarily

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coincide with Buber's sphere of I-You meeting. The student of myth should move beyond Buber to take seriously the elitist elements in mythological traditions.

CONCLUSION

Buber's definition of myth, his explication of its purpose, and his understanding of it as a form of communication contribute to the work of theorists of myth. That legacy remains an important one despite limitations in his definition of myth. His sense that the purpose of myth is to stimulate I-You meeting needs to be more conservatively identified as an attempt at normative direction. His interpretation of the hasidic message should be tempered by a greater awareness of its esoteric appeal. Buber's greatest contribution remains that of a teacher instructing students how to learn. He shows by example the meaning of "humanity the student." Maurice Friedman explores the master-disciple relationship that Buber developed with Hermann Gerson as a paradigm of how Buber understood his own role as teacher. Buber was the "helper" who would encourage "the handing down of values, the institutional linking of the generations through teaching." The problem with the Jewish Youth Movement, Buber argued, lay in leaders who were "not persons who hand down existence and teaching." When Gerson turned to Buber for help, he received the teaching

370 EVALUATING BUBER that "There is no reliable yardstick for ethical decisions ... but there is the one direction to the living truth."20 Buber refused to let his students substitute his thinking for their own creative being. He remained a "You" and enabled his students to maintain their individuality before him. Buber's relation to other theorists of myth exemplifies the same response. Buber's challenge reminds fellow theorists of the importance of their definitions of myth, of their understanding of its purpose, and of their transmission of its message. His theories help identify the problems facing interpreters of myth. Buber's theory arises from his openness as "humanity the student." That spirit of studenthood pervades his work on myth and remains an important contribution for all who study myth.

EVALUATING BUBER

1.

2.

371

NOTES See Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper, 1967), pp. 244-45. The story calls him "Reb Eisik ben Reb Yekel" using a shortened Hebrew form of Rabbi and the Hebrew word "ben" for son

of. 3.

Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), pp. 170-71.

4.

J. W. Rogerson, Mvth in Old Testament Interpretation (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974), p. 96.

5.

Will Herberg explores the existential and ritual implications of the story of the Exodus as the central myth in Judaism. See his discussions of the Exodus in his Judaism and Modern Man: An Interpretation of Jewish Religion (New York: Harper, 1951), pp. 261-72, and Faith Enacted as History: Essays in Biblical Theology, ed. and intro. Bernard W. Anderson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), pp. 32-42.

6.

Martin Buber, For The Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945), pp. 270-76.

7.

Ibid.. p. 271.

372 EVALUATING BUBER 8.

Ibid., pp. 274-75.

9.

Ibid., p . 275.

10 . Ibid., p. 276. 11. See Bernhard Casper, "Franz Rosenzweig's Criticism of Buber's I and Thou," in Haim Gordon and Jochanan Bloch, eds., Martin Buber : A Centenary Volume (New York: KTAV, 1984), pp. 139-59. 12. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962), pp. 221-31.. 13. Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies (New York: Macmillan, 1949), p. 112. 14. See the remarks in the appendix to Caspar, "Franz Rosenzweig's Criticism," pp. 158-59. 15. Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), p. 60. 16. Schatz-Uffenheimer, "Man's Relation to God and World in Buber's Rendering of the Hasidic Teaching," p. 431. Contrast, however, Buber's rendition to the sources presented in Joseph Dan, ed. The Hasidic Novella [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1966), pp. 73-82.

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17. See Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1955), pp. 10-13. 18. Caspar, "Franz Rosenzweig's Criticism," p. 153. 19. Mendel Piekarz, Studies in Braslav Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: n.p., 1972), pp. 83-84, 108-9, 114-15. 20. Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Middle Years, 1923-1945 (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 143-45.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (1)

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

Cohn, Margot, and Rafeel Buber. Martin Buber: A Bibliography of His Writings, 19971978. Jerusalem: Magnes Press; Munich: K. G. Saur, 1980. Moonan, Willard. Martin Buber and His Critics: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings in English through 1978. New York: Garland, 1981. (2) BY BUBER (a) BOOKS:

GENERAL

Between Man and Man. With an afterword by the author and an introduction by Maurice Friedman. Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Maurice Friedman. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy. New York: Harper, 1952. Paperback: New York: Harper, 1957.

375

376 BIBLIOGRAPHY I and Thou. A new translation with a prologue and notes by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Scribner's, 1970. Original ed. ed. and trans. Ronald Gregor Smith. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1937. Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis. First ed. New York: Schocken, 1948. Second ed. New York: Schocken, 1963. On Zion: The History of an Idea. With a new foreword by Nahum N. Glatzer. Trans. Stanley Godman. New York: Schocken, 1975. Original ed. Israel and Palestine — The History of an Idea. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952. Pointing the Wav: Collected Essays. Trans., ed., and with a new intro. Maurice S. Friedman. New York: Harper, 1963. Original ed. New York: Harper, 1957. (b)

BOOKS:

BIBLICAL

Darkho Shel Migra [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1964. Good and Evil: Two Interpretations— Right and Wrong, Images of Good and Evil. Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith and Michael Bullock. New York: Scribner's, 1953. Kingship of God. Third ed. Trans. Scheimann. New York: Harper, 1967. Paperback: New York: Harper, 1973.

Richard

Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. trans. given]. Oxford: East and West

[No

BIBLIOGRAPHY 377 Library, 1946. 1958.

Paperback: New York: Harper,

The Prophetic Faith. Trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies. New York: Macmillan, 1949. Paperback: New York: Harper, 1960. Two Types of Faith: A Study of the Interpenetration of Judaism and Christianity. Trans. Norman P. Goldhawk. New York: Macmillan, 1951. Paperback: New York: Harper, 1961. (c)

BOOKS:

HASIDIC

For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle. Trans. Ludwig Lewisohn. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945. Paperback: New foreword by author. New York: Harper, 1966. Hasidism and Modern Man. Ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman. New York: Horizon Press, 1958. Paperback: New York: Harper, 1966. Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters. Trans. Olga Marx. New York: Schocken, 1947. Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters. Trans. Olga Marx. New York: Schocken, 1947. The Legend of the Baal Shem. Trans. Maurice Friedman. New York: Schocken, 1955. The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism. Ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman. New York: Horizon Press, 1960.

378 BIBLIOGRAPHY The Tales of Rabbi Nahman. Trans. Maurice Friedman. New York: Horizon Press, 1956. (d)

BOOKS:

ANTHOLOGIES

A Believing Humanism: Gleanings. Credo Perspectives, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen. Trans., intro, and explanatory comments Maurice Friedman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969. On Judaism. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. York: Schocken, 1967.

New

On the Bible: Eighteen Studies. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1968. The Wav of Response: Martin Buber. Selections from his writings. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1966. The Writings of Martin Buber. Selected, ed. and intro. Will Herberg. Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1956. (3)

ABOUT BUBER (a) BOOKS:

Breslauer, S. Daniel. The Chrysalis of Religion: A Guide to the Jewishness of Buber's "I and Thou." Nashville: Abingdon, 1980. Diamond, Malcolm L. Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 379 Friedman, Maurice. Martin Buber and the Eternal. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1986. ______ . Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955. Paperback: New York: Harper, 1960. Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Earlv Years, 1878-1923. New York: Dutton, 1981. Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Middlei Years, 1923-1945. New York: Dutton, 1981. Martin Buber's Life and Work: The Later Years, 1945-1964. New York: Dutton, 1981. Gordon, Haim, and Jochanan Bloch, eds. Martin Buber : A Centenary Volume. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, BenGurion University of the Negev. New York: KTAV, 1984. Hodes, Aubrey. Martin Buber: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Viking, 1971. Horwitz, Rivka. Buber's Wav to "I and Thou” : An Historical Analysis and the First Publication of Martin Buber's Lectures "Religion Als Gegenwart". Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1978. Kohanski, Alexander S. An Analytical Interpretation of Martin Buber's I and Thou, with a Biographical Introduction and

380 BIBLIOGRAPHY Glossary. Barron's Educational Series. Woodbury, NY: Barron's, 1975. ______ . Martin Buber's Philosophy of Interhuman Relation: A Response to the Human Problematic of Our Time. Sara F. Yoseloff Memorial Publications in Judaism and Jewish Affairs. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1982. Schilpp, Paul Arthur, and Maurice Friedman, eds. The Philosophy of Martin Buber. The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XII. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967. Silberstein, Laurence J. Martin Buber's Social and Religious Thought: Alienation and the Quest For Meaning. New York: New York University Press, 1989. Vermes, Pamela. Buber on God and the Perfect Man. Brown Judaic Studies, Vol. 13. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980. Wood, Robert E . Martin Buber's Ontology: An Analysis of I and Thou. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969. (b)

ARTICLES:

Bergman, Samuel Hugo. "Martin Buber: Life as Dialogue." In his Faith and Reason: Modern Jewish Thought. Trans, and ed. Alfred Jospe. Hillel Book. New York: Schocken, 1963. Pp. 81-97.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 381

Berkovits, Eliezer. "Martin Buber's Religion of the Dialogue." In his Maior Themes in Modern Philosophies of Judaism. New York: KTAV, 1974. Pp. 68-137. Dreyfus, Theodore. "Understanding the Term 'Umkehr' in the Philosophy of Martin Buber." Daat 9 (1982): 71-74. Glatzer, Nahum N. "Aspects of Martin Buber's Thought." Modern Judaism 1:1 (1981) 1-16. ______ . "Editor's Postscript." In Buber, On the Bible, pp. 233-40. ______ , ed. On Jewish Learning. York: Schocken, 1965.

New

Gordon, Haim. "Method of Clarifying Buber's I-Thou Relationship." Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (1976): 71-83. Kaufmann, Walter. "Prologue." In Buber, I and Thou. Pp. 9-48. Levy, Zeev. "Demythologization and Remythologization" [Hebrew]. In Bar Ilan Annual. Vols. 22-23. Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 1987. Pp. 205-27. Mendes-Flohr, Paul. "Martin Buber's Reception among Jews." Modern Judaism 6:2 (1986): 111-26. Scholem, Gershom G. "Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism." In his The

382 BIBLIOGRAPHY Messianic Idea In Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. Trans. Michael A. Meyer. New York: Schocken, 1971. Pp. 20327. ______ . "Martin Buber's Judaism." In his On Jews and Judaism in Crisis. Ed. Werner J. Dannhauser. New York: Schocken, 1976. Pp. 126-71. Swarcz, Moshe. "The Concept of Myth and the Question of 'Demythologization' in Martin Buber's System." In his Language, Mvth, and Art [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1966. Pp. 216-49. Talmon, Shemaryahu. "Martin Buber's Way of Interpreting the Bible." Journal of Jewish Studies 27 (1976): 195-209. Weiss, Meir. "The Secret of Scriptural Speech" [Hebrew]. Intro, to Buber, Darkho Shel Migra. Pp. 9-33. (4)

ABOUT BIBLICAL MYTH

Cassutto, Umberto. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: From Adam to Noah. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961. Frankfort, Henri. Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. ______ , with H. A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson, and Thorkild Jacobsen. Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Aventure of

BIBLIOGRAPHY 383 Ancient Man. 1949.

Baltimore: Penguin Books,

Goldziher, Ignac. Mythology Among the Hebrews and its Historical Development. Trans. Russell Maretineau. Marandell Book. New York: Cooper Square, 1967. Kaufmann, Yehezkel. The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. Trans, and abridged Moshe Greenberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. ______ . Toldot Haemunah HaYisraelit. Vol. I Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1937. Rogerson, J. W. Mvth in Old Testament Interpretation. BZAW No. 134. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974. Uffenheimer, Benjamin. "Myth and Reality in Ancient Israel." In S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Civilization. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986. Pp. 136-67. Zeitlin, Irving M. Ancient Judaism: Biblical Criticism From Max Weber to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. (5)

ABOUT HASIDIC MYTH

Agnon, Shmuel Yosef. Sefer, Sofer, Vesippur [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1978. Band, Arnold J. "The Function of the Enigmatic in Two Hasidic Tales." In Joseph Dan and Frank Talmage, eds., Studies in

384 BIBLIOGRAPHY Jewish Mysticism. Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1982. 185-209.

Pp.

Ben-Amos, Dan, and Jerome R. Mintz, eds. and trans. Shivhei HaBesht: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970. Biale, David. Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History. Second ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Bloom, Harold, ed. Gershom Scholem. Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Dan, Joseph. Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History. Modern Jewish Masters Series. New York: New York University Press, 1987. ______ , ed. The Hasidic Novella [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1966. ______ . The Hasidic Story— Its History and Development [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Keter, 1975. Elstein, Yoav. In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess: A Structural Analysis of the First Tale by Rabbi Nachman of Braslav [Hebrew]. Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 1984. . Maaseh Hoshev: Studies in Hasidic Tales [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: n.p., 1983.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 385 Green, Arthur. Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav. New York: Schocken, 1981. Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Levin, Meyer. The Golden Mountain. York: Behrman House, 1932.

New

Nahman of Bratzlav. Rabbi Nahman: The Tales. Ed. and trans. Arnold J. Band. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. Scholem, Gershom G. Keter, 1974.

Kabbalah.

Jerusalem:

______ . On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken, 1969. ______ . Major Trends In Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken, 1946. Third Ed., 1954.

(6)

ABOUT MYTHOLOGY GENERALLY

Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities. Trans. Philip Mairet. New York: Harper, 1960. Segal, Robert A. "In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth." Annals of Scholarship 1:1 (1980): 3-49.

INDEX

Abraham 61, 62, 65, 204

Cain Canaan

Adam 67, 82, 142, 150, 159, 163, 187, 258, 286

93

Cassirer, Ernst xi, xiii, 276-77

adama 159, 166, 187 Amos

59, 150, 180

charisma 54, 73, 76, 192, 193, 208

211

apocalyptic 84, 104, 105, 135

circumcision 187, 198, 199, 204-8, 214-16, 219, 220, 224

ascension, myth of 56-78

Collingwood, R. G. 92

Band, Arnold 28789, 291, 295, 332-35, 338

communication 15, 23, 101, 304, 356-69

Bultmann, Rudolf 101-2, 105-6, 125-30, 360 387

388 INDEX community 18, 56, 90, 123, 147, 156, 173, 185, 191, 192, 198, 201, 202, 203, 216-25, 236, 239, 243, 260, 305, 321, 323, 342, 347, 360 covenant 99, 174, 185-227 creation xiii, 96-98, 141-78, 187, 192, 202, 218, 222, 23738, 286-87, 291-92 Cross, Frank Moore 120-25, 130 culture 24-25, 60, 105, 204 Dan, Joseph 269, 273-74, 297-98 David, King 61, 173, 325-28, 332, 334, 335 David, of Korostyshev 323-25

death

143, 159, 172, 323-25, 343-47

Deuteronomy 166, 188, 195 devil (see also Satan) 143, 145, 294, 333, 335, 342, 345 dialogue x, xi, 7 8, 14, 18, 21, 29, 30, 34, 102, 104, 112, 114, 116, 127, 149, 150, 161, 167, 241, 243, 244, 246, 324, 338, 344, 355 dualism

319

Eliade, Mircea xi 57-59, 64, 70, 73, 78, 141, 142, 143, 145, 147-50, 176-78, 328, 353

INDEX 389 Eliezer, Rabbi 25456

existentialism 129, 268

Elijah 344

Exodus 185-227, 270, 356, 363, 365

63—66, 71,

Elijah, Gaon of Vilna 76 Elisha

63

Elstein, Yoav 263, 288, 328-32, 340, 364, 366 Enoch xiii, 54-80, 147, 360 Eve

162, 258

evil 42, 49, 76, 122, 143-57, 159, 160, 164, 167, 170, 175, 176, 187, 243, 257, 284, 292, 294-96, 302, 318, 323, 324, 326, 332, 334, 336, 337, 342, 343, 345-47, 364 exile 174, 192, 199, 218, 238, 290, 292

faith

26, 106, 126, 201, 214, 230, 232, 318, 333,

7,

104, 121, 190, 209, 215, 231, 296, 323, 334

Frankfort, Henri xi, 98-100, 107, 109, 120, 121, 124, 130 Freud, Sigmund 161, 185, 186, 205 Friedman, Maurice xi, 13, 247, 282 Genesis xiii, 18, 59-63, 71, 75, 91, 127, 133, 141-78, 185-88, 190, 194, 204,

390 INDEX 210, 258, 337, 363, 365 Glatzer, Nahum N. xiv, 89, 156, 157 Gnosticism 31, 110, 116, 129, 268 God

13, 15, 18, 20, 27, 30, 58-61, 65, 72, 81, 89, 90, 96-100, 104, 107-9, 112, 113, 114-20, 122-24 f 127, 144, 145, 150-52, 158-62 r 164, 165, 167, 168-72, 176, 188, 189, 191, 192- 95, 197, 198, 202, 209, 211-13, 215-20 r 222, 223, 224, 225, 229, 238, 243, 244, 252, 255, 256, 258, 270, 272, 275- 77, 280-84, 286, 288, 296, 301, 304, 319, 321, 324, 327, 333, 336, 340, 341, 345, 346, 356, 362

Goldberg, Michael 230 Goldziher, Ignac 22

Green, Arthur 283, 297

139,

Grese, Willism C. 72 Gunkel, Hermann Hayyim, Rabbi of Zans, 254-56 hero

25-26, 5370, 76-79, 89-90, 18889, 205, 208, 213, 274, 346, 367

history 60, 61, 71, 89-100, 102- 7, 123, 124, 129, 141, 143, 144, 145, 147, 150, 154, 163, 165, 173, 174, 188, 189, 192, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 218- 23, 287 292, 298,

60

INDEX 391 321, 328, 332, 345, 356, 367 Huizinga, Johan

247-49, 254, 257, 269, 272, 283, 322-28, 332-47

4

imagination 29, 30, 49, 94, 126, 157, 161, 169, 171, 172, 241, 247, 275, 303

Jacobs, Louis

Jensen, Adolf E. 56-59, 64, 70, 73, 78 Jeremiah

Isaiah 63, 68, 71, 90, 119, 120, 123, 201 Israel, ancient 17, 61-63, 89100, 105, 10910, 117, 121, 165, 173-74, 187-95, 19899, 207, 21825, 335

79

211

Jesus

45, 50, 67, 72, 73, 83, 125-30, 320

Job

111-20, 123, 136, 137, 333, 334, 343

John (New Testament book) 72-74, 102, 127-30

Israel, land of 3, 13, 238, 297-99

Joseph

Israel, of Rizhin, Rabbi 259-73

Jung, Carl Gustav 29-30, 45

Israel, people of 21, 90, 292

Kabbalah 278, 287, 291,

Israel, Rabbi, Baal Shem Tov (BESHT) 26-27, 75, 229, 236,

332, 334

55, 268, 281, 289, 368

Karo, Joseph 77

76,

392 INDEX Kaufmann, Walter, xii, 5, 250, 264

Levi-Strauss, Claude 186

Kaufmann, Yehezkel 32, 90, 95-97, 117, 130

Levy, Zeev

Kuk, Yehudit 92, 296

magic

291-

language x, xi, xii, xiii, 8, 23, 101-2, 1067, 113, 117, 125, 126, 156, 168, 190, 204, 206, 242, 246, 247, 267-83, 285, 287, 289, 296, 297, 300, 304, 358, 360 law

21, 214, 254, 322, 325-26, 341, 345, 357

leadership 53, 54, 56-58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 70-72, 76-79, 89, 90, 147, 187, 190-93, 199, 209, 212, 213, 305, 318, 334, 365

22, 23,

Luria, Isaac 54, 116, 119, 129, 211, 243, 248, 334,

254

110, 118, 124, 132, 222, 244, 288, 340-43

Maimonides, Moses 76, 77 Mendel, of Vorki, Rabbi 269 Mendes-Flohr, Paul 51 Messiah (Messianism) 83, 89-90, 120, 238-39, 255, 302, 320-21, 33839 Metatron Methuselah

74 59

INDEX 393 Midian

199, 210

Moses xiii, 76, 188, 189, 191, 194-227, 364

157, 175, 235, 241, 268, 276, 279-82, 295, 363, 368

Muilenburg, James 50, 91

Piekarz, Mendel 368

Nahman, Rabbi of Bratzlav 245, 282-305, 368

prophet 62-64, 68, 71, 1045, 111-12, 116-17, 11920, 126, 174, 188, 190-94, 20813, 218, 225

Nicodemus 127

72-74,

Noah 61, 64, 66, 285

65,

paganism 96-97, 106-11, 113, 116, 117, 122, 155, 179, 187 Pannwitz, Rudolf 31, 33 Passover (see also seder) 194224, 356, 363 Paul, of Tarsus 129 philosophy xi, xiv, 4, 7, 19, 23, 50, 69, 77, 93, 100-2, 156,

Psalms 121-24, 190, 283-84, 327-28 psychology 29-30, 186, 216, 283, 288, 291, 363 redemption 25, 64, 223, 237, 238, 243, 244, 256, 272, 287, 288, 291, 292, 297, 299, 300, 302, 303,

394 INDEX 320, 321, 327, 339, 341 Rehoboam

61

Reik, Theodor xi, xiii, 185-87, 199, 200, 203-8, 214-16, 219, 220, 221, 225-27 religion ix, xi, 7, 14-16, 18-26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 53, 54, 57, 66, 69, 91, 96, 98, 99, 100, 102-5, 109, 111, 113, 119, 120, 125, 126, 174, 186, 188, 189-91, 195, 200, 201, 209, 212, 236, 240, 241, 246, 267, 269, 273, 276, 277, 281, 282, 283, 318, 321, 326, 341, 344, 356, 361, 363, 367 repentance (see also teshuva) 145, 256, 288, 292

revelation 72, 115, 128, 152, 174, 188, 202, 210, 215, 231, 279, 280, 281, 300, 302, 303, 322 Ricoeur, Paul

145

Rosenberg, Joel 129 Rosenzweig, Franz 6, 7, 14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 156, 361, 364-65 Satan (see also devil) 112, 113, 118, 294, 302, 333, 334, 336, 337, 339, 342, 343 Scholem, Gershom G. xiii, 17, 75, 79, 248, 262, 267-305, 320, 328-29, 349, 364, 366-67

INDEX 395 Seder (see also Passover) 356-58, 363

Wellhausen, Julius 91-92, 97 Wright, G. Ernest 93, 96

Shneur Zalman, Rabbi 237, 256-57 Smith, William Robertson xvi, 8, 200-4, 208, 222-27 Solomon 332

61, 174,

Spinoza, Baruch 235, 319, 321 teshuva (see also repentance) 152, 331 theocracy

192-93

theology 16, 21, 23, 102, 103, 268 Uffenheimer, Benjamin 187, Weber, Max 192-93

106,

53-54,

Weiss, Joseph 92, 296

291-

zaddik 67, 236-43, 250, 260, 269-70, 27374, 284, 294-303, 365 Zevi, Sabbetai 77, 238, 240, 243, 319-321 Zion

14, 297

Zipporah

199

Zushya, Rabbi 61

260-

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: MYTH

Volume 2

THE METHODS OF THE GERNET CLASSICISTS

THE METHODS OF THE GERNET CLASSICISTS The Structuralists on Myth

ROLAND A. CHAMPAGNE

First published as The Structuralists on Myth: An Introduction in 1992 This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1992 Roland A. Champagne All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-82525-3 (Set) eISBN: 978-1-315-73033-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-138-84062-1 (Volume 2) eISBN: 978-1-315-73275-6 (Volume 2) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

THE STRUCTURALISTS ON MYTH An Introduction

Roland A. Champagne

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. • NEW YORK & LONDON

1992

© 1992 Roland A. Champagne All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Champagne, Roland A. The structuralists on myth : an introduction / by Roland A. Champagne. p. cm. — (Theorists of myth ; vol. 6) (Garland reference library of the humanities ; vol. 1167) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8240-3447-3 (alk. paper) 1. Structural anthropology—France. 2. Myth—Structural analysis. 3. Mythology, Classical. 4. Gemet Center (France) I. Title. II. Series. HI. Series: Garland reference library of the humanities ; vol. 1167. GR161.G425 1992 398.2'0938—dc20 92-22998 CIP

Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper Manufactured in the United States of America

DEDICATION

For Nina, who is my model for demythologizing as she always finds the heart of the story.

CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Foreword

ix

Acknowledgments

xiii

Chapter One— The Structure of Myth

1

Chapter Two— Barthes: Myth as M eaningful Form

21

Chapter Three— Levi-Strauss and the Problems of Oedipus

33

Chapter Four— Vernant: A Logic of the Equivocal

57

C hapter Five— Detienne: The Empirical Categories of Myth

85

Chapter Six— Vidal-Naquet: A Factotum of History

113

Chapter Seven— Loraux: The Myths of Death and Life

139

Chapter Eight— G ernet’s Legacy: A French New H istoricism

161

Conclusion— The Place of the G ernet Center

185

Selected Bibliography

195

Index

211

vii

SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD As a theory of myth, not to say of culture as a whole, structuralism peaked in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was superseded by one or more varieties of "poststructuralism." While Claude Levi-Strauss, the key founder of structuralism , continues to w rite, Jacques D errida and others have succeeded him as reigning intellectuals of the moment. Still, the impact of structuralism , like that of functionalism and psychoanalysis, will doubtless endure. While no longer in vogue in anthropological and literary circles, structuralism continues to be employed with even increasing fervor by classicists. It is not merely disparate individuals who have been using the theory but a form al, organized group of French classicists headed by Jean-P ierre V ernant. In 1975 V ernant founded the "Center for Com parative Research on A ncient Societies." The Center was subsequently named the "Gernet Center" in honor o f V ernant’s influential teacher, Louis G ernet. The most prom inent members of the Center, besides Vernant himself, are Marcel D etienne, Pierre V idal-N aquet, and Nicole Loraux. "Secondgeneration" members of the Center include Frangois Hartog, Fran?oise Frontisi-D ucroux, Annie Schnapp-G ourbeillon, Fran?ois Lissarrague, Laurence Kahn, Jesper Svenbro, Alain M oreau, and Jean-Louis Durand. The members of the Center have not simply applied but adapted Levi-Strauss’ brand of structuralism . Over the years Levi-Strauss has regularly been lambasted by critics for isolating myth from its various contexts— social, cultural, political, economic, even sexual. In a famous 1964 essay on the Tsimshian Indian myth of Asdiwal, Levi-Strauss did provide a detailed ethnographic analysis of a myth. He examined and integrated geographical, economic, sociological, and cosmological factors. Yet thereafter, as before, he largely analyzed myth in the abstract. V ernant and his fellow classicists at the G ernet Center have sought to tether Levi-Strauss’ structuralism to the more conventional classicist concern with context. Preferring for that reason to label their approach "structural" rather than

"structuralist," they have taken Levi-Strauss’ analysis o f the Asdiwal m yth as their model. They scrutinize myths not only for their internal order, or structure, but at least as m uch for their external one— for the relationship between a m yth and other aspects of classical culture. The relationship may tu rn out to be causal, functional, or merely symmetrical. The aspect exam ined may be social, cultural, political, economic, or sexual. As the heirs of Levi-Strauss, the members o f the C enter seek to decipher underlying, often latent patterns in the m yths they scrutinize, but they then seek to connect those patterns to comparable ones in the culture at large. Because the context studied is the G reek one, the members of the Center are necessarily particularists rather than, like Levi-Strauss, universalists. Myths are taken as the expressions of distinctively G reek ideas and practices rather than, as for Levi-Strauss, manifestations of the working of the hum an m ind per se. The meanings and functions of myths are also seen as evolving— in response, for example, to the rise o f the city-state— rather than, as for Levi-Strauss, fixed. The G ernet Center scholars are especially concerned w ith distinguishing w ritten myths, with which they deal, from oral ones, with which Levi-Strauss deals. Classical myths are those of a literate rather than a nonliterate society. While initially oral, they were w ritten down and are examined in th eir w ritten versions. By training a professor of French rather than of classics, Roland Champagne treats the G ernet School as a distinctively French movement. He traces the influences on V ernant o f not only Levi-Strauss but also Roland Barthes, the other pioneering French structuralist. He then traces the influence on D etienne, V idal-N aquet, and Loraux of V ernant and L eviStrauss alike. He also considers the influence on V ernant and in turn on the others of the pre-structuralists G ernet and Ignace Meyerson. Champagne explains the distinctive topics to w hich each leading member of the Center is devoted. He uses the case of the Oedipus myth to illustrate the distinctive approach of each member. He continually demonstrates how m embers of the Center m odify Levi-Strauss’ approach to suit their individual purposes. At the same time he notes the x

influences of members on one another. His book provides a most helpful overview of the work to date of French structuralists both in classics and in general.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am beholden to Nina Ekstein for making time to edit my w riting, To Brian Vandenburg for his discussions and readings about myth over the last ten years, To Judi Lipsett and Char M iller for their innum erable kindnesses to this wanderer between San Antonio and St. Louis, To Craig Likness for references that only a true bibliophile and friend could provide, To Steve Hause for his assistance with historical details, To Pierre V idal-N aquet for his assistance with details about the G ernet Center, To my colleagues at the U niversity of M issouri-St. Louis for their support of my research with a 1990 Chancellor’s Humanities Award, and To Robert Segal for his conception of the project and its focus at various stages in its evolution.

The Structuralists on Myth

C hapter One THE STRUCTURE OF MYTH

According to the French anthropologist Claude LeviStrauss, myths are the products of the resourceful ingenuity (in French, bricolage)1 of indigenous peoples selecting narrative materials from their environments. The nature of this resourceful ingenuity has intrigued a group o f French intellectuals during the past thirty years. This group is called "structuralist" because its members attribute the survival, the origin, and the function of myths to common crosscultural factors they identify as "structures." These structures are bundles of information not obvious either to the narrator or to the listener. The bundles are collected features that reveal either the reasons for the survival of myths, or their origins, or their functions within their contexts. The structuralists consider themselves to have talents as the collectors from myths of these bundles of information. The structuralists do not always agree about the application o f the word "structuralist" to myth. However, they can be generally classified according to whether they bundle myths by 1) the survival of myth, 2) the origin of myth, or 3) its function within a specified context. The survival of myth especially interests those concerned with the anthropological and philosophical aspects of myths such as Levi-Strauss (b. 1906) and Roland Barthes (19151980). Those who discuss origins are often linked with philology, which studies the evolution of words in the narratives of myths. Jean-Pierre Vernant (b. 1914), Marcel Detienne (b. 1936), and Nicole Loraux (b. 1943) practice this

1

2

The Structuralists on M yth

kind of structuralist analysis of myths. The function of myths appeals to those seeking to recover the cultural contexts of myths. Pierre V idal-N aquet (b. 1930) and sometimes V ernant take this opportunity. Barthes and Levi-Strauss study the survival of m yth in culture. Levi-Strauss analyzes the oral folklore of N orth and South American Indian tribes to derive insights into how the "human spirit" (Vesprit humain) expresses itself. Barthes proposes broad formal categories for the survival of cultural unity in mythologies unconsciously constructed by the routines o f daily life. Levi-Strauss provides a model of survival known as ethnographic analysis, which is further developed by the other two camps. That model is best exem plified in his reading of the Asdiwal myth. The functionalist position of Vernant and V idal-N aquet takes the ethnographic method as its model and develops a social and historical context within which myths provide meaning. V ernant is the prim ary exponent of the social functionalist position. V idal-N aquet advocates a historical context. The functionalist approach differs from that of LeviStrauss and Barthes in its emphasis on myth as a source of meaning for a particular culture rather than as a source of universal human expression. The philological, or etymological, group of French structuralism explains the roots of a myth and its continuing meaning as changes or developments of those origins. D etienne and Loraux (as well as Vernant and V idal-N aquet occasionally) use the etymology of Greek words to gain insight into some of the classical myths. They use the tracing of the origins of concepts to plot the historical developm ent of myths along with pertinent concepts such as law, fam ily, and equality. The philological method is often combined with the methods of the functionalists in the work of the G ernet C enter, founded by V ernant in the early 1970s. The three groups both seek connections w ithin a specific m yth and link groups of myths into common bundles of meaning. The survivalist view of myth finds connections that have nothing to do with the historical origins of myths. Both Levi-Strauss and Barthes are generally concerned with non­

The Structure o f Myth

3

w ritten, and therefore undocumented, myths. The ties of these myths to their culture are thus not so empirical and verifiable as they are speculative and abstract. By contrast, V ernant, Detienne, and V idal-N aquet began to understand in the early 1970s that w ritten myths had characteristics unique to their form as literature. Written myths were composed w ithin a specifiable culture, at a specifiable moment, for a specifiable audience, with specifiable components. The connections made by the structural method had to address these distinctive marks of w ritten myths. In some cases, the oral myths could not be studied together with them because of the unique form of w ritten myths. The G ernet Center was founded as a place where the structural method could be applied to the classics. At this C enter, V ernant, Detienne, V idal-N aquet, and Loraux have developed various examples of the functionalist and the philological structural methods. Before getting into the specifics of the various structuralist presentations of myth, let us look at the reasons for the use of the words "structure" and "structural" within a general theory of myth analysis. I will then provide an overview of the principal contributors of the "structuralist" ideology and of the way their views provide different readings of the Oedipus myth— a subject of much controversy among the French structuralists.

THE STRUCTURALIST THEORY OF MYTH The word "structure" was borrowed from the discipline of linguistics, where a structure provides a diagram for the binary principles of contradiction residing in the logical explanations of language. For example, the science of pronunciation, phonetics, describes the letter "s" as pronounced in different ways depending on its environment. The opposition of voiced and unvoiced consonants constitutes a phonetic structure that helps to explain the phenomenon by grouping the pronunciation of the letter "s" into a diagram resembling an accountant’s balance sheet to reveal what is known in phonology as minimal phonemic pairs. By analyzing

4

The Structuralists on M yth

the absence or presence of the voiced or unvoiced "s" as a minimal pair in various environments (e.g., between vowels, as part of another syllable), rules can then be constructed about the changes in the pronunciation of the letter "s." Similarly, Levi-Strauss finds binary structures to be helpful in studying m yth by setting up the param eters of values implied w ithin the myth. By juxtaposing two contradictory factors in a myth such as human and divine intervention, he sets up polar opposites and a semantic line dividing the story into bundles, or clusters, of meanings— for example, according to w hether an event represents hum an or divine intervention. This cluster of meanings is a whole structure which interacts with other structures to compose the system of a given myth. The very title "structuralist" for the many contributors in this group is confusing in that no single philosophy, methodology, or ideology links them together as a school. In addition to French structuralism , there have been com peting "structuralist" schools in the Soviet U nion, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Denmark, and the U nited States.2 The word "structuralism" in France is used to speak about a group of five individuals (Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Louis Althusser) who from the period 1958 to 1968 were independently involved in bringing the methods of the social sciences to bear on hum anistic endeavors. Only Barthes and Levi-Strauss applied the structuralist attitude to the study of myths. Barthes was one of the first structuralists to o ffer a theory of the structure of myths. Barthes (M ythologies, 1957) theorizes that myth is "a form ... defined not by the recipient o f its message but by the way it expresses the message."3 Thus he is concerned not with what myth means to listeners (its content) but with how myth expresses its meaning (its form). As a form al entity, myth can be analyzed either structurally— by encompassing universal narrative strategies of how myths are expressed— or textually— by analyzing the rhetoric, diction, and syntax. Barthes chooses to focus on the structural properties of a myth’s form. Barthes was not the first to focus on the form of myths.

The Structure o f Myth

5

During the 1920s and 1930s Russian Formalism, as exem plified by Vladimir Propp in his The Morphology o f Folktales (1928), had offered a method which identifies the structure of stories as the sequence of recurring motifs. The Formalist research established narrative meaning as an im itation of the structure of a sentence by linking the narrative motifs in the model of subject, predicate, and direct and indirect objects. In addition, the Prague School of linguistics led by Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), the Russianborn phonologist, had investigated the phonetic aspects of language during the 1920s and had advocated the form ation of the discipline of structural linguistics. During the early 1940s Jakobson taught Levi-Strauss this linguistic method. LeviStrauss adapted the model to investigate anthropological data such as the myths he had heard while in Brazil during the early 1930s. Levi-Strauss objected to Propp’s exclusion of content, so he adopted the word "structure" from linguistics to provide a concept that would encompass both content and form. R ather than concentrating exclusively on how a story is told (its form ), as Propp is alleged to have done with his stringing together motifs, Levi-Strauss also incorporates what a story has to say (its content). As Levi-Strauss identified structures among myths from different peoples and disparate geographical and historical backgrounds, he began to m aintain that the structure of myths would lead to the universal properties of the human mind. The structure gives LeviStrauss clues about how humanity processes inform ation and narrates stories to compose meaning. Despite the insights derived from the formal properties of myths Barthes and Levi-Strauss both incited opposition to their methods. Both offended the traditional scholars who used historical context as the validating criterion for stories and myths. On the one hand Barthes was opposed by Raymond Picard (b. 1917), a Sorbonne professor and specialist on Jean Racine, who accused Barthes of being too arbitrary, impressionistic, and humorless in creating a "new criticism."4 According to him, Barthes was not respectful enough of the historical and cultural circumstances of myths. Similarly, Levi-Strauss was castigated by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980),

6

The Structuralists on Myth

the existentialist philosopher, for not engaging historical detail in the analysis of myths. Marcel Detienne, a practitioner of the functionalist and philological structuralist methods, accused Levi-Strauss of being too abstract in his analysis of the Oedipus myth (see Chapter Three). Both Barthes and LeviStrauss were faulted for not properly using the scientific methods of the linguists by Georges M ounin (b. 1910), a leading linguist and semiologist. This opposition to the form alist agenda led to the creation of an alternative version of structuralism by Jean-P ierre V ernant, then a professor of classics at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Inspired by Louis G ernet (1882-1962), a scholar of Greek law who had considerable theoretical influence on V ernant and his colleagues at the Ecole Pratique, V ernant advocated learning as much detail as possible about a culture and its historical and geographical setting before analyzing a myth structurally. With this agenda he organized in 1975 what is now the Louis G ernet Center for the Com parative Study of A ncient Societies to conduct structural analysis w ithin a philological context. Marcel Detienne soon joined him there. In addition, Pierre V idal-N aquet, a historian w ith a background in journalism and investigative reporting, and Nicole Loraux, a philologist with interests in the psychology of women in classical Greece, have provided the core for the contextualist school of French structuralist myth analysis. Before continuing with detailed presentations of each contributor, let us consider what is meant by the concept "structure" and why is it that the French have invested so m uch in this kind of myth analysis.

STRU C TU R E AS A BUILDING BLOCK The word "structure" comes from struere in Latin meaning "building." The term refers to the fram ew ork or scaffolding of a building. In the linguistic circles of Europe during the 1920s and ’30s this "structure" was used to describe the sound (phonetic) components of language. Nikolai

The Structure o f Myth

7

Troubetskoy (1890-1938), the founder of phonology and a member of the Prague School of linguistics, claimed that historical explanations are inadequate to explain the phonetic similarities in different languages. In 1933 he proposed a model for classifying the distinctive features that separated units of meaning (phonemes) in sounds. This model entails a binary method, with a "+" or a s i g n at the head of columns, to indicate the presence or absence of a phonemic feature such as voicing or non-voicing--e.g., the difference in sound and meaning between a "z" and an "s" in English. Troubetskoy’s work was spread in the U nited States during the 1940s by Roman Jakobson, who emigrated to New York’s New School for Social Research. There Levi-Strauss met Jakobson and learned about Troubetskoy’s binary taxonomic categories. Levi-Strauss and Jakobson would later collaborate on an article analyzing a French poem by Charles Baudelaire titled "Les Chats" ("The Cats").5 M eanwhile Levi-Strauss adopted the terms of structural linguistics for anthropology. He had been studying anthropology in Brazil during the early 1930s and had collected oral myths from the Indian tribes of South America. In New York he began to apply the binary methods of Troubetskoy to resolve contradictions in the narratives of these myths. His method proceeds by constructing polar tensions of meaning— tensions similar to the distinctive features plotted by Troubetskoy. For example, in Levi-Strauss’ reading of the Oedipus myth the category of autochthony, meaning "born of the earth" rather than of woman, leads to understanding why certain characters have privileged behavior. Cadmus, an ancestor of Oedipus, is reputed to have been born of the earth. This origin stands opposed to normal blood relations, which are attributed to births from women. Levi-Strauss identifies four poles according to w hether characters possess autochthonous or normal relations with others. With a grid based on these distinctions, he then resolves the contradictions of patricide and incest in Oedipus, the beloved king and savior of a people from the Sphinx. This schema of the Oedipus myth (see Chapter Three) is characteristic of Levi-Strauss’ tendency to

8

The Structuralists on Myth

reproduce visually a myth or group of myths on a grid w ith intersecting axes representing bundles of derived mythical inform ation. Typically, the resulting grid or graph displays the principles around which Levi-Strauss explains the structures of myths. These principles integrate the content and form of myths. His is not a search for the origin of myth. Instead, he seeks to dem onstrate that myth is above all "a logical instrum ent"6 transcending the apparent contradictions observed by "civilized" listeners or readers who impose m onocultural standards on myths from other cultures. The resourceful ingenuity of the anthropologist or the reader is also called upon to look beyond appearances and retrieve a hidden logical structure. The survivalist group of French structuralists, inspired by Levi-Strauss and Barthes, is intent upon revealing the cultural appeal of unrecognized codes in myths. These codes are called "homologies" or language structures expressing similarities. The sim ilarities produced through these homologies exem plify the lesson of myth analysis for Barthes: that myth does not hide anything.7 A fter a careful discovery of the misleading contradictions of the appearances of myths, the reasons that a myth is still appealing reveal themselves. Both Barthes and Levi-Strauss use complex arguments to show these transparent meanings of myth. To many of their readers this transparency of m yth is not so obvious. Likewise scholars of w ritten myths do not agree at all with Barthes and Levi-Strauss about the transparency of myths. When Levi-Strauss turns to the w ritten m yth of Oedipus and applies logical schematics to the Cadmus legend of autochthonous hum anity, V ernant and Detienne are disappointed with the absence of references to known historical scholarship about the setting for this w ell-know n myth. The creation of abstract models from myths is problem atic. Levi-Strauss works with myth in the m anner of Joseph Campbell, as reported by R obert Segal: "Just as Cam pbell severs myths from their narrative context, so he severs them from their social one."8 M yth is being cut away from the whole to which it belonged originally and to which

The Structure o f Myth

9

it provided an animating life. However, the method of structural analysis still has much to offer the study of myths. V ernant and Detienne prefer to say that they are using the structural method to enhance their work but that they do not adhere to a whole structuralist ideology by which the structure explains all meaning in a myth or any other narrative text. The form al model of the structuralist analysis o f myths is instructive in showing how the human mind works. When, however, a myth is inscribed within a particular culture, the myth becomes what the Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson calls "a whole social and collective m irror image."9 In order to retain this social consciousness of myth, the contextualist school of Vernant and Detienne studies the narrator, the listener, and the story of a myth within the cultural setting. According to this school, the variation of Oedipus invented by Levi-Strauss the bricoleur vitiates the cultural setting in which Sophocles (496-06 B.C.), for example, transm itted Oedipus through his tragic trilogy. The politics of the city-state, the conflict of logos/muthos, and the complex ties of myth and tragedy cannot be ignored. Within the classical G reek setting myth is an explanation of hum anity’s relationships with other humans, the gods, and animals. The problems of timelessness for the gods and of gender for hum anity are key issues in the Greek myths. Levi-Strauss avoids both issues by identifying Oedipus in an autochthonous fram ew ork in which women and time are not part of the human dilemma for Oedipus. Detienne responds by stipulating that Greek myth participates in the three orders of the citystate: the divine, the human, and the animal. The political body was so im portant that the Greeks of the fourth century B.C. even added the goddess of persuasion, Peitho, to the pantheon.10 Civic discussion surrounded the evolution of the G reek city as myths waned in popularity. Peitho joined other mythical women responsible for the human predicam ent. Pandora the first woman instigated the separation of men from gods and the accompanying scourge of death to humanity. Hestia, goddess of the hearth, inspired no narrative yet traced the locus of the housewife in the promised Land of Happily Ever A fter.11 Athena, the virgin, the nonmother, and the

10

The Structuralists on M yth

goddess of wisdom, incarnated the contradiction of women’s situation as ever-present noncitizens of ancient G reek society. In this environm ent Oedipus and his pursuit of self-know ledge becomes a tragic myth staged for the discussion of the nature of human virtue. V ernant and his colleagues insist that w ritten myths like that of Oedipus cannot be analyzed in the same way as oral myths. And so a breach appeared within French structuralism to restore myths to their social and ideological milieux.

TH E FREN CH H ERITA GE First of all, why is there a French variant of structuralism ? Many of the scholars of structuralism are natives of other cultures. However, they all published their works in French in Paris-based publishing houses. T heir publication in French gives them the right to be identified as French, as opposed to the Prague, Copenhagen, or Yale schools of structuralism . The tenets of the French writers are also based on French traditions in sciences beginning with Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who, by the application of m athem atical logic, provided the model for reason as the sole basis for deducing scientific truth. The scientific spirit continued in Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte founded positivism , the empirical philosophy exem plifying truth as derived from sense experience. Emile D urkheim (1858-1917) began applying the empirical spirit in the social sciences with the invention of sociology. He inspired both Lucien LevyBruhl (1857-1939), who advocated the study of prelogical and mystical thinking, and Marcel Mauss (1873-1950), whose study of gifts (Essai sur le don, 1934) was very influential as a model for positing a fram ework for social relationships. C ultural anthropology, called ethnology in France, grew out of the m ixture of these various exponents of scientific truth. It is in this line that Claude Levi-Strauss assumed his identity as an ethnologist in 1934 when he went to Brazil for three years. Levi-Strauss achieved both fame and notoriety with the publication of his Tristes Tropiques in 1955. This was his

The Structure o f Myth

11

travel log as an ethnologist among Amazon Indian tribes during the 1930s. It was there that he was introduced to the world of myth. From 1958 to 1968 he was the leading voice of French structuralism and published many books propounding the "structuralist" analysis of myth as an alternative to the historical approach. For him, a historical approach is evolutionary: myth is seen by moderns as a product of inferior prim itives, their cultural forerunners. Levi-Strauss theorizes that the human m ind is the same everywhere, so that he denies the superiority of "civilized" to "primitive" peoples. The "civilized" setting of the late 1950s included the Cold War, the threat of atomic w arfare, and the French colonial struggles in Vietnam and in Algeria. The myths of peoples isolated from this so-called civilization became popular, as did the methods of the new discipline of structural linguistics, which also was an alternative to a historical orientation, and that of philology, which is the study of the sources of words, their etymons. Levi-Strauss applies the model of structural linguistics analogically to myths as language systems and thus argues that the human mind has a similar structure no m atter where or when the expression occurs. In Paris, where fashion reigns in intellectual endeavors as much as in other ones, there is considerable jockeying for leadership among the various groups. Within French structuralism , the survivalists, the functionalists, and the philologists have vied for leadership. Levi-Strauss developed his survivalist theories about the nature of structuralism during the late 1950s and then, during the early 1960s, found him self enmeshed in debates about the tenets of structuralism with Sartre, V ernant, the hermeneutical philosopher Paul Ricoeur (b. 1913), and the British anthropologist Edm und Leach (1910-1990). Then Vernant presented his alternative of a contextualist method at the 1967 conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins U niversity.12 There the yet unknown philosopher Jacques Derrida (b. 1930) challenged V ernant for being too realistic. Nevertheless, Vernant’s "realism" has had a welcome reception from classicists because of his refusal to bend philology for the sake of higher philosophical stakes. At the same time there are considerable differences in method

12

The Structuralists on M yth

and result among Vernant, Marcel Detienne, Pierre V idalN aquet, Nicole Loraux, and the succeeding generation of scholars they have inspired. Each of these variations w arrants a separate introduction. V ernant was organizing a group to promote his own structural approach to the study of G reek myths in particular while Levi-Strauss was constantly defending his method. The ethnologist thus attracted attention to the study of myths while also incurring rancor for the way he analyzed them. Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who advocated the maximum involvem ent of hum anity with the social problems of a historical moment, charged Levi-Strauss with being historically inauthentic because the "structuralist" orientation precluded the historical elements of Sartre’s preferred dialectical method. For Sartre, the dialectic is a term derived from K arl M arx (1818-1883). According to M arx, the classes of society are in constant struggle to achieve their goals and identity. The dialectical method entails the comm itment of the individual to that struggle of the classes. For Sartre, LeviStrauss is not "dialectically engaged" with the tribes who narrated the myths. In fact, Levi-Strauss made very few field trips to collect the myths for his four-volum e Mythologiques. G enerally, he analyzes the myths with the Cartesian m ethod o f applied mathematical rigor. Instead o f the dialectical m ethod o f being personally involved in the collection of data and entailing the social history of the tribes in the presentation of their myths, Levi-Strauss brings together myths of d ifferen t peoples, places, and moments as examples of the collective "human spirit." He is opposed to the monocultural approach generally implied by the prim ary investigator’s presentations o f the cultures of others. By presenting the common logic or logics of myths collected from various times and places, LeviStrauss offers a view of human thinking that transcends the lim itations of monocultural reductions of m yth to interpretations by dom inant cultures. O f course, to transcend is to rise above. Levi-Strauss sees m yth as part of an abstract intellectual paradigm. Paul R icoeur criticizes Levi-Strauss for ignoring the context w ithin which myths operate— that of mythology. Since myth is a form of

The Structure o f Myth

13

narration existing in time with a beginning and an ending, myth belongs to a social web of rites and symbols. R ather than Levi-Strauss’ insistence that myths lead us directly to the structures of human thinking, Ricoeur encourages LeviStrauss to consider the subordination of myth to symbol because "there is no myth w ithout a hint of mythology."15 Both Ricoeur and Sartre object to Levi-Strauss’ indifference to the larger contexts of myths. In response, Levi-Strauss provides a rare case for the "ethnographic context": his analysis of the Asdiwal myth from the Pacific coast of Canada.14 This context is the setting that a w riter of ethnological narratives must prepare before beginning to write. By explaining the geographic, economic, sociological, and cosmological settings for this m yth, LeviStrauss invents a model for explaining myth on what he calls horizontal and vertical axes. These axes are derived from Jakobson, who invented a grid of the horizontal axis for m etaphor (the literal identification of two unlike items— e.g., "The eagle spoke as a chieftain") and the vertical axis for metonymy (the substitution of one thing for another without explicit linkages— e.g., "The Kremlin [rather than the Soviet President] rejected the American plea for peace") to explain a text linguistically. Whereas the literary use of metonymy entails the literal substitution o f one thing for another, Jakobson describes the operation of this substitution on the same literal plane, which he calls the horizontal axis. The use o f m etaphor is by analogy and requires an imaginative leap outside the literal realm. Jakobson plots metaphor on what he calls the vertical axis. The grid of these two axes conveniently diagrams the use of language and is found throughout LeviStrauss’ own writings as a means to plot the intersection of the languages of the many myths he collects. With such a grid Levi-Strauss constructs a matrix within which myth and the various factors attributable to its historical context can be analyzed with horizontal and vertical axes. Despite his concession to his critics who object to his usually dismissive attitude toward historical factors, LeviStrauss remained committed in his promotion of the formal presence of the "human spirit," the universal presence of the

14

The Structuralists on M yth

same patterns in human thinking. Ricoeur accused him of being K antian in his insistence on the categorical im perative, or the innate determ ination, of the human spirit. Levi-Strauss took the appellation K antian as a compliment and did not return to the Asdiwal example of the "contextualist method" in other analytical exercises. Excepting Levi-Strauss’ Asdiwal analysis, Jean-P ierre V ernant objects to Levi-Strauss in his lack of sensitivity to the general interaction of a w ritten myth with its historical setting. Since much more is known about the history and geographical setting of w ritten myths than is known about the myths o f oral traditions, the setting often provides pertinent clues about the relationship of the myth to its originating culture. The survivalist attitude about myths concentrates more on the similarities of one myth to other myths. Since the survivalists, Barthes and Levi-Strauss, focus on oral traditions, they assume that myths have an internal cohesion and logic that can be analyzed w ithout explaining the interaction of myths with their readers. Nevertheless, the structuralist orientation appeals to V ernant. It helps him make new connections between m yth and society. Building on Levi-Strauss’ ethnographic model of Asdiwal he introduces the influences of words and change upon the G reek myths. Vernant is more sensitive than L eviStrauss to the influences of cultural change upon myth. He often uses the historical study of Greek words done by philologists to analyze the changes in philosophical concepts over time and their influence on concepts in myths. Such words as "justice," "family,"' "slave," and "household" are insightful for their concomitant evolution with the developm ent of G reek self-governance in the city-states during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. In order to attract scholars who could help to identify the changing concepts which affected the contexts o f G reek m yths, V ernant founded the G ernet Center in 1975 as a research base fostering this variant of structuralism . There he insists that myths be described in their internal and external cohesion and that their geographical and historical contexts be applied to an analysis of the mythological network in which a

The Structure o f Myth

15

single myth exists. Vernant thus applies a spatial and temporal grid within which myths are to be appreciated. For example, V ernant’s presentation, with M arcel D etienne, of "cunning intelligence" (metis) is especially representative of a new "liberal philology," in which the myths of Greek antiquity are placed in relationships exem plifying balance. Hermes, for example, is a cunning god who is the master of snares and the inspiration for hunters and fisherm en. His model of resourcefulness for men must be seen as the counterbalance to Hestia, the goddess of the hearth and the model for women as guardians of family values w ithin the evolving Greek city state. The Greek concepts of household, justice, and family influenced the central place that these two gods played in the daily lives of the Greeks. During the 1970s Vernant attracted noteworthy scholars to his contextualist cause in Paris. Marcel Detienne and Pierre V idal-N aquet joined him at the Ecole Pratique, and V idalN aquet succeeded Vernant as Director of the Center. All three have collaborated to provide a unique kind of structural method emanating from the Center. Some works are jo in t projects of the C enter.16 Each participant, however, has a separate and clearly defined interest and agenda. Detienne is the figure most involved in distinguishing the method of the contextualists from the formalism of LeviStrauss. Himself a form er Levi-Straussian, Detienne is a philologist in orientation as opposed Vernant, whose basic orientation is that of a philosopher and psychologist. Detienne advocates more respect for philology, for the role of words and their evolution in myths, and for change in w ritten myths. Written myths are anchors in the evolution o f the cultures to which they belong. Stylistically, Detienne effectively uses Socratic questions to whet the appetites of his readers as he examines the underlying assumptions of classical myths. His questions are never directly answered and are rem iniscent of Paul G auguin’s exploration of myth by titling his paintings as questions. Pierre V idal-N aquet complements Detienne by addressing the political and ideological motives for myths. V idal-N aquet brings to the Center an anti-racist penchant from his

16

The Structuralists on M yth

opposition to the Algerian War. He signed the M anifesto of the 121 against the War and wrote a pamphlet revealing the French A rm y’s tactics of torture during the War. He also analyzed various revisionist myths denying the Holocaust. Preferring not to be labeled a structuralist but rather an advocate of structural analysis, V idal-N aquet presents this analysis as a heuristic instrum ent for the exploration of classical myth. As a historian, he views myth as the repository for the collective memory of a social group. In addition to the revisionist myths about the Holocaust, he has w ritten about the political myths of the Golden Age of G reece, Plato’s m yth of the statesman, and the May ’68 revolts in France. Nicole Loraux completes the first generation of G ernet C enter scholars as a student and now as a colleague to V ernant and V idal-N aquet. Her interests in sociology, philology, psychology, and the roles of women in G reek society have been especially valuable in developing the interests in wom en’s issues initially suggested by V ernant, Detienne, and V idalN aquet. Loraux has made valuable contributions with her analysis of funeral speeches in Athens and the ways in which women are allowed to die in Greek myths and tragedies. She explores the rhetorical models for women in the city-state. While death became the occasion for perpetuating the im m ortality of the city-state in funeral orations, the deaths of women had no glory at all and instead became the occasion for observing silence. Loraux explores the myths of A thena and Pandora as role models for women in a society in which the presence o f women was a rem inder o f men’s separation from the company of the gods. Loraux views myth as knowledge serving rhetorically as an argum ent for the ideological positioning of one social group vis-a-vis another. This rhetorical role of m yth— myth as the conveyor of argum ent and social experim ent— leads Loraux to examine the relationships of discourse to the gender roles of G reek society. H er insights into the discourses of G reek men and women are especially inspirational for a second generation of scholars who are making their mark especially in the semiotic and artistic dimensions of G reek myths.

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This younger generation of contextualists also brings enthusiasm for the development of the stakes established by V ernant, Detienne, and V idal-N aquet. There is the emerging im portance of Francois Hartog, Suzanne Said, and Florence Dupont. Hartog, who is being translated into English as part of the program for "new historicism" in the U nited States, rereads Herodotus (c.484-25 B.C.), the father of history, in such a way that his telling is appreciated as reflective of the discourse of his era. Said, who is on the university faculty at Strasbourg, is reexamining the contextualist stakes in the myths of Prometheus. Dupont, whose research is supported by the G ernet Center, exposes the banquet as a paradigm for the relationships between pleasure and the law from Plato to the Satyricon (1 A.D.). In Le Plaisir et la loi (1977) she develops the arguments for a prereferential language in the logos sym potikos ,17 which is based on a tradition extending from Plato’s Symposium. I will examine each of these contributors to the French structural approach to myth. Let us look first at Roland Barthes, whose formalist methods brought international popularity to the analysis of myths.

NOTES

1. Claude Levi-Strauss, La Pensee sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962) (tr. The Savage M ind [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966]). See especially the chapter "La Science du concret" ("The Science of the Concrete") for his presentation of bricolage. 2. See my French Structuralism (Boston: Twayne World A uthor Series, 1990), chap. 1, for a discussion of the competing claims and parameters of the various "structuralist" schools of thought. 3. Roland Barthes, M ythologies, tr. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972), p. 109.

18

The Structuralists on M yth

4. Raymond Picard, Nouvelle critique ou nouvelle imposture? (Utrecht: Pauvert, 1965). Picard is especially concerned in this pam phlet with how Barthes has created a m ythology of his "new criticism" and has encouraged, in his Sur Racine (1963), a misleading reading of Jean R acine’s theater. 5.Roman Jakobson and Claude Levi-Strauss, "‘Les C hats’ de Charles Baudelaire," L ’Homme, II (January-A pril 1962), pp. 5-21. 6. Claude Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon, 1958), pp. 239-43. 7. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957), p. 207. Also Lavers tr. p. 121. 8. Robert A. Segal, Joseph Campbell: An Introduction (New York: G arland, 1987), p. 138. 9. Fredric Jameson, The Ideologies o f Theory, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: University of M innesota Press, 1988), p. 151. 10. See I. F. Stone, The Trial o f Brown, 1988), pp. 205ff. A thena "recognize the majesty of Peitho" persuasion since open discussion dem ocratic government of Athens.

Socrates (Boston: Little, required the Furies to as the new goddess o f became crucial in the

11. See K athryn Allen Rabuzzi, The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology o f Housework (New York: Seabury Press, 1982), on the effects of the absence of myths about Hestia the goddess of the hearth in the mythology of housewifery. 12. A collection of the lectures and discussions appeared as The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages o f Criticism and the Sciences o f Man, ed. R ichard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U niversity Press, 1970).

The Structure o f Myth

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13. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict o f Interpretations, tr. Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern U niversity Press, 1974), p. 29. 14. Claude Levi-Strauss, "La Geste d’Asdiwal," in Anthropologie structurale II (Paris: Plon, 1973), tr. N. Mann as "The Story of Asdiwal" in Structural Anthropology II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 146-97. 15. This term was invented by Robert Pogue Harrison in his review of the collaborative work by Vernant and Detienne in "The Ambiguities of Philology," Diacritics, XVI, 2 (Summer 1986), 14ff. 16. For example, the collaborative activities as members o f the G ernet Center have produced the already m entioned Les Ruses de Vintelligence (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), tr. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (1978), by Detienne and Vernant; La Cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris: Gallim ard, 1979), tr. The Cuisine o f Sacrifice Among the Greeks {1989), by Detienne and Vernant; Mythe et tragedie en Gr'ece Ancienne (Paris: Maspero, 1972; vol. 2, Paris: La D ecouverte, 1986), tr. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (1988), by V ernant and V idal-Naquet. 17. Florence Dupont, Le Plaisir et la loi (Paris: Maspero, 1977), pp. 39ff.

C hapter Two BARTHES: MYTH AS M EA NINGFUL FORM

From 1954 to 1956 Roland Barthes wrote a regular column for the newspaper Les Letires nouvelles entitled "The Mythology o f the Month." This column discussed the hidden meanings of aspects and items of life in France. The mythologies were his meanings for unsuspected myths in the day-to-day experiences of the French. The myths were the stories that connected the objects to French culture. Barthes’ subjects ranged from popular song as bourgeois art to the Tour de France as epic to wine as a national totem. Prior to Barthes’ proclamations of the myths of France, the French neither gave these objects any manifest meaning nor identified them as myths. His approach was structuralist because he discovered latent connections between these objects and assumptions about the nature of French culture as an identifiable narrative to which these myths contributed elaborating chapters. In 1953 Barthes wrote in the same newspaper that the analysis of myths was "the only effective m anner for an intellectual to be involved politically."1 This political involvement entailed the exposition of ideologies implied by the hidden structures of meaning in myths. Barthes was being dialectically involved in the struggle of society’s existence, thus fulfilling Jean-Paul Sartre’s call for the intellectual’s responsibility in society. During the early 1950s, mythology was for Barthes "a delusion to be explored," as literary critic Jonathan Culler has expressed it.2 The "delusion" was Barthes’ belief in the methods of semiology, the linguistic study of signs according

21

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The Structuralists on Myth

to Ferdinand deSaussure (1857-1913), one of the theoreticians of structural linguistics. The model of semiology inspired Barthes to claim that an item possessed a hidden structure along with a mythical story. For example, wrestling was popular entertainm ent in France during the early 1950s. Barthes presents this spectacle as the m anifestation of a symbolic contest for Good and Evil, a specifically French ethical struggle that transcends political associations with the acting out of Suffering, Hum iliation, and the ultim ate resolution of Justice. The political references are to wrestling in the U nited States at a time when wrestlers were identified w ith politically tainted ideologies (e.g., the title "Red" for a Communist). For Barthes, French wrestlers are like priests in a religious ceremony. The spectators are transported by the experience. The change is brought about by the cathartic effect of participating in the suffering and hum iliation o f the wrestlers within the context of Good and Evil struggling to bring about Justice. Inevitably, the spectators leave with a sense of justice in that the Good wrestler prevails, thus validating Justice naively thought to be working in their daily lives. A lthough this analysis might have been achieved by many a nonstructuralist, Barthes claims a structuralist identity for his approach. The approach is "structuralist" in that it identifies a cohesive, hidden identity. Barthes focuses on the survival of some cultural items and attributes this survival to their mythical "forms." Forms are those organic features of cultural items which allow them to survive the test of time. Barthes views such forms as mythologized when they assume narrative coherence for a culture. Of course, the narrative is elaborated by Barthes rather than by the culture. He is a seer who makes m anifest what is implied in the usage of the object in the daily lives of the bourgeois. The constructed narrative gives the reasons for the survival of the myth by explaining the relationship of the myth to the values of society, as in the example of wrestling as a religious enactm ent of justice. Barthes’ narration provides the verbal component for the story and its latent ties between an artifact and its culture. This reconstruction of myths by Barthes is in sharp contrast to

Barthes: Myth as M eaningful Form

23

myths found in cultures such as ancient Greece, where the stories are already narrated and where only the connection to the culture must be established. Nevertheless, Barthes contributes the art of connecting the myth to a culture through his developm ent of the implied scaffolding that links what has survived with the values of a culture.

MYTH AS A KIND OF SPEECH What Roland Barthes called "mythologies" were also collected in an anthology with that name in 1957. An extensive essay, "Myth Today," which is appended to that collection, offers insights into the nature of structuralist analysis as a tool for explaining the survival of myths. This anthology appeared about a year after the publication of Claude Levi-Strauss’ very popular Tristes Tropiques. Not only did Levi-Strauss’ popularity enhance the Barthes work, but some of their common critics claim that Barthes’ method was a loosely applied adaptation of the misguided linguistics of LeviStrauss.3 Despite these barbs, to which I will return at the end of this chapter, there is much to be learned from "Myth Today" about the structuralist stance on myths. Like Levi-Strauss, Barthes is concerned with explaining the survival of myths. While Levi-Strauss presents myth as an elaboration of the "human spirit," Barthes grounds myth in its language. Like speech, myth is motivated by that which surrounds it. This "motivation" determines a myth’s meaning and provides a linguistic setting for meaning similar to the context advocated by the G ernet Center scholars. Barthes says that there is no myth without a "motivated form."4 In effect, this motivation is Barthes’ nod to the historical effect on mythical form. Accordingly, the myth of wrestling for the French in the early 1950s provides a basis for the survival of clearly defined moral codes after the confusing messages of the Occupation, collaboration, and the purge trials. The activity of wrestling was mythologized by French culture because its mythology provided an ethical narrative explaining the survival of Good and Evil by which the French might

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The Structuralists on M yth

judge other contem porary features such as the Cold War, colonial campaigns, and the threat of atomic war. Barthes therefore attributes the survival of myth to its serving a contem porary social need. The "motivated form" of a myth is typically hidden from view. Social need and language combine to provide the m otivation for the survival of a myth. For example, Barthes invokes the psychoanalytic analysis of myth as a paradigm for the disguised motivated form. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) recalls the Oedipus myth from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (c. 431 B.C.). The paradigm of the family triangle as the basis for the socialization of human sexuality represents the social need for Freud. The sexual desires of a son for his m other, at the expense of his father, constitute Freud’s explanation o f the self’s search for the social other. Barthes notes that language provides a disguise for the newly motivated myth, in this case the Sophoclean story, with a neologism, in this case, the "Oedipus complex." Thus social need and language contribute to the motivated form of myth. Barthes’ structuralist perspective of myth does not end with his focusing on the motivation of a myth. He explains his method as analyzing "the body of intentions which have m otivated it [myth] and arranged it there as the signal o f an individual history."5 This "individual history" found in the motivation of myths distinguishes Barthes from Levi-Strauss who has a general disregard for history. In some of the debates about structuralism such as the one with Raymond Picard of the Sorbonne during the mid-1960s, Barthes was accused of vitiating history because of his association with the structuralism of Levi-Strauss.6 However, as we shall see, Barthes has a unique view of history as it applies w ithin the structuralist fram ew ork of myth analysis.

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AN INDIVIDUAL HISTORY For Barthes, events of the day cause an individual sign to be mythologized and transform ed into something greater than itself. For example, the medical community at the end of the nineteenth century was so sure of itself and intent upon healing maladies called neuroses that some members of the com m unity restru ctu red their careers to becom e psychoanalysts, thus investing great power in the myth o f the Oedipus complex as narrated by Freud. Barthes would probably call the Oedipus complex a second-order myth. This is a myth based on another myth and transforms the first one to such an extent that it calls into question the very viability of the original myth. The Oedipus myth is better known in the psychoanalytic version than in the version narrated by Sophocles. Barthes portrays myth as a part of ideology, the nonconscious thinking by a culture of itself. As an ideological construction, myth uses symbols, words that mean something other than their literal meaning, to portray a culture’s values. Wrestling, as we have seen, is such an example for the France o f the 1950s. Such mythical symbols require a certain kind of interpretation. Barthes calls himself a semiologist in this role as interpreter of mythical symbols. A semiologist explains the functioning of signs according to the model o f language. Barthes’ description of myth as a speech act is crucial to understanding his presentation of myth as a form of language. The structure of a myth is tripartite, as is a sign. Like (1) a sign linking (2) a concept to (3) a meaning, (1) a myth uses multiple signs within its (2) form to invent (3) signification. M yth is thus a second-order sign. The structure of a myth is sim ilar to that of a sign in that its meaning is distinct from its conceptualization and its representation. The survival of the m yth in its representation is largely the result of a culture’s ideological weaving of the myth into the fabric o f a culture. This weaving is done by the use of symbols so that the literal sense of a myth is given additional meaning by the ideology of a culture.

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The Structuralists on M yth

For Barthes, the symbolic values attributed to myths occur w ithin an ideology. The symbolic and thus ideological meanings given to myths constitute what Barthes calls the m yth’s "alibi." This linking gives value to the individual history of a myth. The literal story of a m yth is not ideological. The meaning of the myth accounts for a culture’s ideology and thus provides the alibi of a myth. The alibi is so effective in rallying the beliefs of a social group about a m yth that, for Barthes, myth does away with the need for dialectical explanations, necessitated by his commitment to M arxist history. The issue of the dialectical struggle led Jean-P aul Sartre to dispute with Levi-Strauss about the disengagement of structuralist myth analysis. In other words, in the structuralist models offered by Levi-Strauss, there is no concern for a m yth’s acceptance w ithin a cultural context. By contrast, Barthes explains that the alibi of a myth indicates the ties betw een m yth and culture as the struggle for the survival o f a given myth. The alibi grounds the myth in the unconscious values prom oted by a culture. This role of the alibi allows for the com patibility of structuralism with history. Barthes says that a little structuralism turns one away from history, but that a lot brings one back to history. It is a question of a measured approach, which the G ernet Center scholars— especially V idal-N aquet— took seriously in their own agenda. The question to ask now is what kind of history is compatible with the structure of myth. In exploring the relationship between history and structure, Barthes calls the distortion of the structure by the alibi a game of hide-and-seek. The literal story of the m yth is hidden by its acknowledged meaning for a given group. This hiding activity of myth is the social m anifestation of the m yth disguising the m yth’s original identity with social m otivation. Barthes calls this "language robbery" because speech is stolen from its original context and reinserted in a new sem antic order. He does not portray the signification or new meaning of myth as an unconscious one. In fact, he insists that there is no play o f the unconscious in the second-order meaning. For Barthes, myth is a game of surfaces covering one another. The

Barthes: Myth as M eaningful Form

27

semiologist must uncover these surfaces to reveal what the meaning, or signification, of a myth is for a culture. Since myth is a surface text without hierarchical structuring, Barthes portrays the signification of a myth as a spatial problem with no recourse to symbolic systems. A symbolic system is an abstract network of meanings in addition to the original literal meaning of a sign. M ythical structure does not take over a sign system by merely making it more abstract and giving it an additional meaning. Instead, mythical structure makes a substitution for the original meaning by shifting the speech act to another place within another neighborhood. The vocabulary used is clearly not temporal or historical but rather spatial or geographical. R ather than the abstract meanings of symbolic activity, myth entails the passing of the meaning in a sign system to a concrete form in which the setting of a concept imbeds a d ifferen t meaning. This meaning of myth is never in the same place as is the form of myth. In other words, meaning, similar to the alibi of myth, does not occupy the same space as the form of myth. The semiologist looks elsewhere for mythical form , alibi, and meaning.

MYTH AS A GLOBAL SIGN M yth assumes the properties of a global sig n --a sign that creates its own world and subsumes other systems in its course. A global sign can also be recognized by other cultures as having value and meaning as a human form of communication. Because of the wide scope of a global sign myth can be read in multiple ways. Barthes identifies three kinds of reading applicable to myth: the cynical, the "demystifying," and the dynamic. The cynical reading is a literal understanding of the m yth as a simple sign. This reading assumes that myth is a form of language conveying a meaning intended by a narrator for a listener. This reading assumes that human communication is no more complex than everyday speech acts, which transfer messages directly to the reader of the myths

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The Structuralists on M yth

w ithout any noise or mediation. For example, the m yth of Oedipus can be read as the story of a man condem ned to unrecognized patricide and incest by the sins of his father: Lam s’ infidelity to Jocasta and his introduction of sodomy into Greece. The dem ystifying reading of myth acknowledges that m yths are sign systems in which some distortion of inform ation takes place. The reader must therefore distinguish overlapping signs producing noise— i.e., no new inform ation— from dense signs, which are capable of producing meaning. But there is bad faith in this kind of reading because of the assumption that the origins of the message can be reproduced. Inspired by Descartes’ motto larvatus prodeo ("I advance wearing a mask"), Barthes speaks o f reading the tragedy of Oedipus all the while knowing that Oedipus will be unmasked.8 In other words, the reader may project upon the reading the problems of the self so that unmasking Oedipus is a solution about the other’s role in the form ation of the self. With that solution in m ind the reader chooses which signs will be either helpful or obstructive in realizing the teleological goal. The dynamic reading allows for the full polyvalence of the signification of myths. In order to read myths dynamically, Barthes promotes the use of the science of semiology to distinguish the speech act of myth as a separate sign system. Portraying the heroes of Jean Racine’s tragedies in Sur Racine, Barthes notes the duality in their characters as the tragic alibis of the mythological figures take them in d ifferent directions from their classical sources. For the Oedipus myth the am biguity of Oedipus’ being driven by fate and by the desire to know him self reveals a natural human ambivalence. In the m yth, this duality is transm itted by the sequence of the Theban myths predicting his fate and the tragic flaw necessary for the credibility of Sophocles’ tragic hero. Barthes’ semiological prospectus for myth was sh o rt­ lived. In 1971 he renounced his semiological project by saying that the science of reading had changed and that his project of distinguishing the ideological from the mythological had itself become m ythical.9 In fact, the criticism levelled at him by the

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linguist and semiologist Georges M ounin10 was devastating because it accused Barthes of not knowing what the linguistic bases were for his semiology of myth. Barthes says that LeviStrauss intervened by encouraging him to stay with w ritten texts but to abandon his project for a semiology under the larger rubric of linguistics.11 However, Barthes did not continue his work on semiology and myths during the last decade of his lifetim e, 1970-80. Some say that his interest in myths and semiology was linked with his pursuit of scientific m ethod.12 And that method reached its zenith and ironic self-fulfillm ent with the publication of S / Z (1970). He exhausted the scientific method in this reading and therefore turned away from myth analysis. Barthes laid some im portant groundwork during his experim ents with myths and mythologies. He participated in the structuralist agenda for fifteen years and contributed toward the clarification o f a French structuralist method. His portrayal of myth as a speech act set the stage for the adaptation of structural linguistics to myth by Levi-Strauss. A lthough Barthes might not have been properly schooled in the sciences of linguistics and semiology, his popular presentation of a scientific attitude toward myth was an im portant step in encouraging the scientific analysis of myth as a linguistic document. Barthes also prepared the way for the studies of myth by other French structuralists. On the one hand he preferred an orientation studying the survival of myth and prom oted the study of a dynamic reading. This dynamic reading, as a recognition of the ambivalence at the heart of myth, is a forerunner of Levi-Strauss’ view of the structure of myth as the resolution of contradictions. Barthes restricted his conception of myth to a narrative phenomenon in which hidden meanings suggest a game of hide-and-seek between meaning and form. Levi-Strauss would take exception to the focus on the form as the structure of myth and broaden the argum ents of mythical structure to include content as well. Nevertheless, Barthes served an im portant role with his notion of the ideological alibi of myth which attributes the meaning of myth to culture. In addition, Barthes, in anticipation of

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The Structuralists on M yth

Levi-Strauss, approached myth neither herm eneutically nor dialectically. These positions proved especially inflam m atory to Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Paul Sartre, as I will discuss in the next chapter. On the other hand the Contextualist position was also announced in Barthes’ prospectus. His observation that "human history rules the life and death of mythical language"13 would be confirm ed by the members of the G ernet Center. Barthes, however, is generally not cited by the G ernet scholars despite their general inclination to cite generously. The B arthes-Picard debates of the early 1960s ended with Barthes’ elevation to a guru figure for the avant-garde. Barthes did not emerge on the side of the historicists despite his earlier claim that m yth could not exist w ithout a motivated form . It must be reasserted that for Barthes myth is not dialectical. This observation undermines his whole project of allowing the form o f myths to interact with history. Despite his insinuations that cultural forms do not threaten history, his program for the m eaningful form of myth in fact precludes the discovery o f new historical inform ation since the ideological alibi orients the reading of myths in a teleological manner. Levi-Strauss offers a more elaborate presentation of the semantic structure of m yths and a longer lasting dedication to the program o f the structuralist reading of myths.

NOTES

1. Roland Barthes, "Maitres et esclaves," Les Lettres nouvelles, M arch 1953, p. 108. 2. Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (New York: O xford U niversity Press, 1983), p. 33. 3. See Georges M ounin, Introduction a la semiologie (Paris: M inuit, 1970), on Barthes’ (pp. 189-98) and L eviStrauss’ (pp. 199-214) erroneous adaptations of the linguistics

Barthes: Myth as M eaningful Form

31

of Louis Hjelmslev (the "semiology" of Barthes) and of Roman Jakobson (Levi-Strauss’ linguistics). 4. Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," in his M ythologies, tr. A nnette Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972), p. 126. 5. Ibid., p. 125. 6. See my Literary History in the Wake o f Roland Barthes (Birmingham, AL.: Summa Publications, 1984) about Barthes’ re-introduction of literary history into reading. 7. Barthes, "Myth Today," p. 131. 8. Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973), pp. 75-76. 9. Roland Barthes, "Change the O bject Itself," in his Im age Music Text, ed. and tr. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977), p. 166. 10. M ounin, pp. 189-99. 11. Roland Barthes, "Reponses," Tel Quel, No. 47 (Fall 1971), 99. 12. For example, Philippe Roger, Roland Barthes, Roman (Paris: Grasset et Fasquelle, 1986), pp. 86ff. 13. Barthes, "Myth Today," p. 110.

C hapter Three LEVI-STRAUSS AND THE PROBLEMS OF OEDIPUS

For Claude Levi-Strauss, myth is a logical instrum ent to think through certain contradictions of human experience.1 M yth makes connections between its inventors and their mysterious world. The connections are not always obvious because myth builds bridges among apparently disconnected phenomena. Levi-Strauss contrasts myth to history by pointing out that, while history is an open system of comm unication because it is always adding new inform ation, myth is a closed system of communication because it is a static form with the same elements combined over and over again.2 The structures discovered by Levi-Strauss are maps of these elements. The maps recur in many different myths and provide ways to resolve contradictions presented by myths. The logic of these structures is innate to the closed system of the myths. Consequently, Levi-Strauss says that myths think themselves. There is a logic inherent in myths. The contradictions of history are resolved within the closed limits of the story of the myth. Levi-Strauss’ analysis of the Oedipus myth illustrates the nature of the closed system of myths. In subsequent chapters we will compare his approach to the myth with that of other French structuralists. Oedipus is supposed to have lived one thousand years before Sophocles immortalized him in the 5th century B.C. Oedipus is doubtless best known because of Freud’s adaptation of the Oedipus character from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Freud’s Oedipus has been so popularized that this is the sole Oedipus that most people know. Gilles Deleuze and Felix G uattari note in Anti-Oedipus (1972) that "psychoanalysis 33

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The Structuralists on M yth

doesn’t need to invent Oedipus: the subjects introduce themselves to their psychiatrists already totally oedipalized."3 The Oedipus myth is thus a part of the vocabulary of contem porary culture in the tradition of tragedy that has become part of the Western experience of growing to adulthood. Freud’s version of Oedipus is that the character evinces unconscious desires toward his parents. He is attached to his m other and is resentful of his father. This complex is based upon Freud’s reading of the tragedies about Oedipus w ritten by Sophocles. In Sophocles’ version, presented in Oedipus R ex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, Laius, King of Thebes through the line of Cadmus, was in exile from Thebes and was staying in the house of Pelops in Attica. There Laius refused sex with his w ife Jocasta and initiated a homosexual relationship with the son o f Pelops, Chrysippus. As retribution, Pelops cursed Laius by promising that if a son was born to Laius, that son would kill his father. Laius and Jocasta did have a son. To preclude the realization of Pelops’ curse, Laius ran a spike through his son’s foot and abandoned him on Mt. Cithaeron. There a shepherd found him and gave him to Polybus, the K ing of C orinth. Since Polybus and his wife, M erope, were childless, they adopted the abandoned infant and named him Oedipus ("swollen foot"). As a young man, Oedipus was once called a bastard child, so he went to Delphi to consult Apollo about his parents. The oracle revealed that Oedipus would not only kill his father but also m arry his mother. He therefore left C orinth, where he thought his real parents resided, and headed for Thebes. Along the road Oedipus killed his real father, Laius, in a "chance" encounter over the right o f way. Oedipus proceeded to deliver Thebes from the Sphinx, which was starving the Thebans and which destroyed those who could not solve its riddle. Oedipus did solve the riddle and thus earned the hand of the widowed Queen, Jocasta. Oedipus and Jocasta had four children: Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone, and Ismene. U pon the discovery of the incest, Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus put his eyes out with Jocasta’s brooch. Oedipus w ent into exile at Colonus, where he was cared for by

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Antigone, while his sons fought over the throne and Ismene stayed in Thebes to keep Antigone inform ed about the fam ily feud. Oedipus disappeared from the earth at Colonus. Eteocles and Polynices were killed. Their uncle, Creon, became King of Thebes and did not allow Antigone to bury the bodies of her brothers. When she nevertheless did do so, she was buried alive. A lthough Sophocles provides "the canonical version"4 of the Oedipus myth, Sophocles is not the only Greek or Roman to pay attention to Oedipus. The classical mythologies narrated by Hesiod, Homer, Apollodorus, Aeschylus, and Seneca, among others, present the Theban saga, of which the Oedipus myth is a part. The saga starts with the founding of the city of Thebes by Cadmus, brother of Europa and son of Agenor, K ing of Tyre. Agenor sends Cadmus and his two brothers to search for their sister Europa, who disappeared because she was abducted by Zeus. Cadmus is advised by the oracle of Delphi to give up the search and to found the city of Thebes. To get water at Thebes he must kill a dragon. The goddess A thena advises Cadmus to sow the dragon’s teeth. From these teeth springs an army of men known as the Spartoi ("the sewn men"). They kill one another until only five remain. They become the ancestors of Theban nobility. The royal family line of Cadmus continues through his marriage to Harmonia, daughter of Ares and A phrodite, until the son of Labdacos, Laius, refuses sex with his wife, Jocasta. Hera, the protectress o f marriage, sends the Sphinx to seize Thebes as retribution for Laius’ disassociation from his wife. There also have been many adaptations of the Oedipus story. Pierre Corneille wrote a tragedy (Oedipe) about the myth in 1659. The modern era has seen adaptations of Oedipus by Igor Stravinsky (the opera-oratorio Oedipus R ex), Pier Pasolini (the film Edipo Re), Hugo von Hofmannstall (Oidipus und die Sphinx), Andre Gide (Oedipe and Thesee), and Jean Cocteau (La Machine in fem ale). The list of adaptations and analogues to the Oedipus myth goes on and on. Lowell Edm unds has compiled the sources and variations in his Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). There have

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The Structuralists on Myth

been many interpretations of the story by nonstructuralists, as exem plified in the anthology and bibliography provided by Edm unds and Alan Dundes in their Oedipus: A Folklore Casebook (New York: Garland, 1984). Because of its survival and function in many varied cultures, the myth of Oedipus has fascinated French structuralists. For Levi-Strauss, the royal fam ily of Cadmus is the determ ining factor in the myth. Cadmus’ sowing in the earth the teeth of monsters to produce the Spartoi, the ancestors of the Thebans, provides a basis for claims about the autochthonous ("born of the earth") beginnings of hum anity and sets up one of the contradictions to be addressed by the structure of the Oedipus myth as cast by Levi-Strauss. Since many ancient cultures believed that man was originally born of the earth, not of woman, and since Levi-Strauss explicitly includes in the Oedipus myth "all its versions,"5 he incorporates the Cadmus legend in his presentation o f the Oedipus myth. Originally published in 1955, "The Structural Study of Myth" breaks down the Oedipus myth into constituent events. Similar events are grouped in "bundles," which are then characterized with simple sentences called "mythemes." The sentences set up relationships within the myth. These relationships are the semantic structures discovered by LeviStrauss. For the Oedipus myth, there are four bundles of meanings: 1) the overrating of blood relations, 2) the underrating of blood relations, 3) the denial o f the autochthonous origins of man, and 4) the persistence of the autochthonous origins of man. These categories are the common features for each column of events presented in the diagram (translated on p. 41). The specific grid, composed of horizontal and vertical sequences, is actually two readings interacting with each other in the same diagram. Levi-Strauss organizes this grid to show his respect for the literal or horizontal sequence of events (what Barthes calls a cynical reading) juxtaposed with his own structural reading, based on a paradigm atic organization of these same events in order to provide a vertical (Barthes’ dynamic reading) reading o f the m yth that would respect the ambiguity of its contradictions on

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the horizontal axis. This ambiguity can then be recast in a positive way to speak about the inherent ambivalence of myths. The four columns chart the greater or lesser degree of either characteristic by organizing sentences that express a relationship— e.g., Oedipus marries his mother Jocasta. This sentence is placed in the column with the common feature of the overrating of blood relations, as exemplified by their incest. The other columns feature the underrating o f blood relations, the denial of the autochthonous origin of man, and the persistence of the autochthonous origin of man. All four columns exemplify the inherent denial of the categories of blood relationships. They thereby affirm autochthony. The diagram is thus an example of Levi-Strauss’ logical model of how myth overcomes the apparent contradiction between humans born from one and humans born from two. He concludes that "the inability to connect two kinds of relationships is overcome (or rather replaced) by the positive statem ent that contradictory relationships are identical inasmuch as they are both self-contradictory in a similar way."6 By contast with the network of relationships Levi-Strauss identifies here, the Oedipus myth is also a rich mine for the philological search for origins that characterizes much of the contextual camp of French myth analysis. The origins of words were part of the fascination of the Greeks themselves with myth. Oedipus, he with the "swollen foot" who is condemned to being crippled and off-balance, is a good source for a discussion of the Greek notion of virtue (arete). The balance so absent in Oedipus is absent as well in his grandfather Labdacos ("left-handed," thus out of synchrony with the right-handed majority). While Socrates teaches that virtuous people are those who know, Sophocles portrays Oedipus as stubbornly pursuing self-knowledge and selfdestruction in the same desire. The written version of the myth in the tragedies by Sophocles especially interests Vernant and his colleagues because of the specificity of its details. V ernant and Marcel Detienne learned from Louis G ernet about the Greek legal system, which placed virtue and

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knowledge w ithin the context of other values for the Greeks. For example, Zeus had also given to hum anity aidos (a sense of shame; religious reverence) and dike (justice in judgm ent; respect for the rights of others) in order to cope with the social pressures of living with others. Oedipus arrives in a society that expects of him these two virtues. A philological insight often leads V ernant and his colleagues into a structural analysis based on the varied meanings of words. For example, V ernant portrays Oedipus as a man caught in the ambiguities and reversals of his name. The G reek word "oedipus" does mean "swollen foot," but also "I know." A ppropriately, Oedipus at once seeks self-know ledge yet lives the ambiguities of the unbalanced or deviant life of a cripple: "a superior and superhum an type of movement that swings right around upon itself, describing a full circle, a type of m ovem ent that the Greeks believed to be peculiar to a num ber of exceptional categories of being." Oedipus is therefore off-balance, according to Vernant, and thus does not have a balanced perspective of others. He desires selfknowledge and is compelled to find it within the limitations of his physical existence, even at the expense of his own fam ily. Those "others" include women. The philosophical perception of otherness is a particularly attractive subject for the structural method in that the alternation of sameness and otherness provides a natural organizing principle which also has functional ramifications. The situation of women in G reek society is an abiding concern of the four leaders (V ernant, D etienne, V idal-N aquet, and Loraux) o f the G ernet Center. In the Sophoclean presentation of the Oedipus myth M erope, Jocasta, Antigone, and the Sphinx embody the fem inine gender on stage. The Sphinx has a woman’s face and represents a m ajor challenge to Oedipus in search of his identity as K ing of Thebes. G ernet notes that it is through Oedipus’ victory over the Sphinx that he acquires his promised heritage: Jocasta and Thebes.8 However, Oedipus the riddle-solver, according to V idal-N aquet, is unable to solve the problem o f his own fate and relies on M erope, Jocasta, and Antigone to get him through the three stages of his own life. In addition, it is Hera who punishes Laius for refusing to have sex with his wife,

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Jocasta. Hence the curse of a goddess rules the fate of Oedipus in a society where women have no citizenship and few legal rights. Loraux examines women’s rights as mothers and human beings in roles played by Merope, Jocasta, and Antigone in Oedipus’ life-cycle. Their fates offer commentaries on the social and political plight of women. The Oedipus myth is a crucial story for French structuralism . On the one hand Levi-Strauss identifies himself as a scientist who relies on the logical model of formal structures to decipher the substratum of myths. Despite the apparent randomness of myths, in which anything can happen, he insists that myths in fact have a rigid order, one which reflects the single way in which all humanity thinks— what Levi-Strauss calls the "human spirit." Thus revealed, this human spirit leads politically to his ideal of a "dynamic tolerance" for all cultures, races, and ideologies. However, Levi-Strauss’ postulation of the autochthonous origins of Oedipus exemplifies what a contem porary anthropologist says about scientific pretensions: "serious scientific inquiry should not search for ultimate causes deriving from some outside source but must confine itself to the study of relations existing between facts which are directly accessible to observation. Levi-Strauss the scientist comes up short as he applies his skills to the Oedipus myth. On the other hand Vernant and his colleagues do study the "relations existing between facts" and present Oedipus with both internal and external cohesion. Internal cohesion is achieved by explaining his character from within the myth. External cohesion comes with the cultural setting of Greece in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. This view of myth focuses on the imaginative power of humanity to express itself analogically rather than univocally. Language is at the heart of understanding this myth as well as others. But the words must be understood in their context. Rather than the taxonomic categories of structural linguistics demonstrated by the diagram m atic analysis of Oedipus by Levi-Strauss, philology offers the contextual power of being precise while also exposing the ambivalence of the language expressing Oedipus’ evolving character. The humanity of Oedipus is at stake in the

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face of charges that he was born not of woman but o f the earth. A fter all, myth is a product of the human im agination.

TH E AMBIVALENCE AT THE CORE OF OEDIPUS Levi-Strauss’ diagrammatic layout of the Oedipus myth into four columns is the model for his structuralist method. Levi-Strauss arrives at these four columns by grouping together vertically similar events in the Oedipus myth. To read the ch art10 (translated on the next page), the events are to be read from left to right, column after column. This chart is supposed to render obvious the repetition of four hidden features in the myth. These four features— overrating and underrating of blood relations (columns 1 and 2); denial and persistence of autochthonous origins (columns 3 and 4)— create the structure of the myth by constituting two sets of contradictory features. The binary oppositions create an am bivalence at the core of the Oedipus myth. O verrating and underrating of blood relations are set o ff against the denial and the persistence of the autochthonous origins of man. Simply put, the Oedipus myth is the acting out of the struggle over hum an origins. M yth thus invents reality by postulating the validity of autochthonous origins. The tension in the Oedipus myth is thus created by the opposition o f blood relations to autochthony. This view is in contrast to the functionalist view of the G ernet Center, which proposes myth as an inverted mirror of reality. TO N EX T PAGE

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The Oedipus M yth According to Levi Strauss 4 1 2 3 Cadmus seeks his sister Europa ravished by Zeus Cadmus kills the dragon The Spartoi kill one another Labdacos (Laius’ father) = "lame" Laius (O.’s father) = "left-sided"

Oedipus kills his father Laius Oedipus kills the Sphinx Oedipus marries his m other Jocasta Eteocles kills his brother Polynices Antigone buries her brother Polynices against the interdiction

Oedipus = "swollenfoot"

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OU T OF FORM CAME STRUCTURE V ladim ir Propp’s The Morphology o f the Folktale (1928) provides a classic "syntagmatic," or linear, model for myth analysis. He classifies thirty-one functions, specifically narrative acts, by which Russian folktales can be narrated sequentially. This model is "syntagmatic" (from the word "syntax") because it classifies the order of agents, acts, recipients, and other components of the plot. Levi-Strauss regards such linear, sequential form s as obvious and superficial. Instead, he prefers a nonlinear, structural, "paradigmatic" (from the word "paradigm") analysis, in which the contradictions of linear models can be resolved semantically by polar oppositions such as that in the Oedipus m yth between blood relations and autochthonous beings. He makes short shrift of Propp’s syntagmatic analysis of form and focuses instead on structure: "Form is defined by opposition to content, an entity in its own right, but structure has no distinct content: it is content itself, and the logical organization in which it is arrested is conceived as a property of the real."11 The structure partakes of polar categories which the "real" holds in logical contradiction such as m ale/fem ale and life/death. Hence Levi-Strauss posits the structure of myth as a logical means for setting the semantic param eters for contradictions outside the stories of the myths. The horizontal and vertical axes serve Levi-Strauss well in charting these contradictions. Once again, he learned this technique from Roman Jakobson, who claimed that a poem can be charted linguistically on a grid composed of six functions and two axes (the horizontal or syntagmatic axis and the vertical or paradigmatic axis) which trace the "duplex structure" of language.12 The six functions are plotted somewhere along these axes and represent the addressor, message, addressee, context, code (common to addressor and addressee), and contact (physical and psychological connection).13 For Levi-Strauss, the semantic aspects of these functions are usually charted in such a way that binary relationships like those in the Oedipus myth between the

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overrating and the underrating of blood relations constitute the principal basis for his diagrams. The resulting grid of the interlocking axes visually brings together a structure which is not apparent in the linear, horizontal, or syntagmatic unfolding of a myth. Where the literal sense of the story introduces simple contradictions, the structure resolves or diminishes them. Levi-Strauss admits that these contradictions are his point of entry into myths: he seeks "to try and find an order behind this apparent disorder."14 The Spartite episode of the Cadmus myth, for example, implies that the Thebans were born from the earth. This story jars with the great crime of incest committed by Oedipus. Did, then, Oedipus really come from the earth or from his m other Jocasta? Why the ambivalence of Oedipus’ ancestral origins? In response to this apparent disorder, Levi-Strauss looks for a vertical layering of truth because the horizontal or literal telling of the myth does not provide any answers. This vertical layering is by direct inspiration from M arxism, psychoanalysis, and geology — the three influences that in Tristes Tropiques Levi-Strauss calls the "mistresses" of his ethnological career. Marxism argues that beneath the surface superstructure of politics lies hidden a deeper substructure. Politics becomes the class struggle to get beyond the appearances of what a dominant class projects as the values of a society. For Levi-Strauss, who is not a committed M arxist, the lesson of the class struggle seething beneath the appearances of a society is instructive in his appreciation of the setting for myth. Struggle is at the core o f mythic structure. The Oedipus myth displays the tension between blood and earth origins which, like Marxism, reveals the struggle of the deep structure hidden beneath the contradictions in the apparent story. Similarly, psychoanalysis provides Levi-Strauss with insight into myths. Psychoanalysis reveals the unconscious, or latent, sources of conscious, or manifest, behavior. Once again, there is suspicion of the validity of the obvious and a tendency to look for "reality" somewhere other than on the surface. Psychoanalysis explains abnormal, or illogical, behavior through the probing of the unconscious. For Levi-Strauss, the

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analysis of myth is a search for a structure which can logically explain an apparent contradiction. That search is "for the invariant, or for the invariant elements among superficial differences."15 While an "invariant" is something which rem ains the same in the course of the changing events in a m yth, a pattern of invariants reveals a m yth’s structure. For example, the autochthonous and blood relations are invariant elements buried in the Oedipus myth. The fourfold structures he identifies (overrating and underrating blood relations; denial and persistence of autochthonous origins) are similar to the childhood events that psychoanalysts discover to explain behavior in adults. In both cases there are hidden explanations about the origins of human behavior that must be exposed in order to understand the whole story of a person— what LeviStrauss calls the structure of the human spirit. Geology likewise abets Levi-Strauss’ analysis of myth. As geology discovers layers of sedim ent from previous historical periods in a paradigmatic fashion by exposing layers superim posed one on the other, so Levi-Strauss probes the surface of myths to discover other layers besides the horizontal one represented by the literal narration of the story. O ften there are many interwoven layers, as with the fourfold structure representing the denial or acquiescence o f autochthonous or blood relations. In geology a core sample reveals multiple layers of historical events. In myth an invariant elem ent in the narrative such as the autochthonous origin of man provides access to a discussion of its layered components like the four features of human origins in the Oedipus story. The three models of vertical layering also entail historical visions. M arxism advocates respect for history in its method of dialectical materialism, whereby an individual is engaged in the class struggle of the moment with all its economic and ideological values. Psychoanalysis explains present behavior by reference to past events— dreams, habits, and relationships. Geology focuses on the residue of the past in the present. Yet Levi-Strauss often opposes his structuralist method to history. History is the use of chronological sequence, sim ilar to the horizontal or syntactical axis, to ground a reading in its

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literal event as a speech act. Although he is ordinarily reluctant to give history a place in structuralism , he does demonstrate in the Asdiwal analysis that "only historical developm ent permits weighing and evaluating the components of the present in their respective relationships."16 Oddly enough, that analysis is not repeated in his later work, which returns to the earlier, ahistorical method. The ahistorical method is partly grounded in an idiosyncratic model of the "bricoleur," or the resourceful inventor. In an almost classic counterpart to the opposition of logos (reason) to muthos (the mythic imagination) in ancient G reek mentality, the bricoleur is contrasted to the engineer. While logos theoretically overcame muthos as the Greek citystate evolved, the bricoleur of mythical thought continues to dom inate the engineer, imprisoned by the compromises of techniques to science. Similarly, Levi-Strauss contrasts the movement of myth to that of history with its ideological commitment to chronological time as a touchstone of truth: M ythical thought for its part is imprisoned in the events and experiences which it never tires of ordering and re-ordering in its search to find them a meaning. But it also acts as a liberator by its protest against the idea that anything can be meaningless with which science at first resigned itself to a comprom ise.17 The bricoleur is thus a model for analyzing the contradictions in myth because invention and resourcefulness are needed to explore the logical bases, the semantic reasons, for the apparent non sequiturs. Levi-Strauss believes that one has to move vertically when the horizontal path is blocked.

THE HERM ENEUTIC CRISIS A vertical, or paradigmatic, reading of myth incorporates symbols, the objects used to represent abstractions, in the literal story. Hermeneutics, the discipline of interpreting a text and explaining that meaning to others, is similarly attracted to

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the symbolic explanations of myths. Paul R icoeur, the herm eneutic philosopher who takes exception to Levi-Strauss’ structuralist readings of m yth, contends that "the m yth should be subordinated to the symbol."18 He means that myths refer to an external system of conscious, not hidden, religious values, of which the symbol is a part. Ricoeur later includes the methods of Levi-Strauss in the herm eneutic scheme by stipulating that Levi-Strauss explains the mechanics of m yth while he, Ricoeur, interprets the m eaning.19 For R icoeur, the structure of the Oedipus myth revolves around w hether G od created hum anity from the earth or w hether there was an original M other Deity from which human life emanated. R icoeur thus adds the dimensions of theological meaning and teleological vision to the structuralist approach. For Levi-Strauss, there are symbols in myths. T heir significance has to do with what Levi-Strauss calls the universality of the human mind (Vesprit humain). Symbols appear to work similarly in myths. Levi-Strauss cites the example of the autochthonous theme in Oedipus as occurring also in Zuni and Pueblo myths about human origins. These sim ilar symbols exem plify what Levi-Strauss calls "internal homologies."20 "Homology," a term taken from biology, means the repetition of a similar structure. For Levi-Strauss, homology is internal because the symbol becomes a reflection of sim ilar patterns in human thinking. R icoeur accuses Levi-Strauss here of m anipulating a "K antian unconscious"21 with the theory of internal homologies. Since the Idealist philosopher Immanuel K ant (1724-1804) speculated that there is a spirit ruling over the world in protective fashion to ensure a whole rather than fragm entation, the reference portrays Levi-Strauss as having a model for human thinking before he actually discovers anything among myths. Despite Levi-Strauss’ penchant for the m aterialism of Marxism and the scientific method of the anthropologist, he claims to be flattered, not offended, by the association with Kant. K ant was the inspiration for the Enlightenm ent adaptation of reason and the beginnings of m odern science. M oreover, K ant’s categorical im perative, by which an individual’s behavior is governed by the same

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principles as the behavior of the individual’s class, is similar to the internal homologies by which the structure of one myth is sometimes explained by the similarity to the structures of other myths. Levi-Strauss’ explanation for the structure of the Oedipus myth is substantiated through analogy to other myths which likewise explain human origins with the pairing of autochthonous and maternal births. The herm eneutic reference to external symbolic systems is especially foreign to Levi-Strauss’ portrayal of the integrity of myths. His task is not to recover what an author of a myth had to say. Instead, Levi-Strauss would have the myths think for themselves. Indeed, in his four-volum e Mythologiques (196471) he analyzes the thinking process "taking place in the myths, in their reflection upon themselves and their interrelation."22 The rejection of the external symbolic reference becomes ever more curious whenever Levi-Strauss identifies the inspiration for anthropology in the natural sciences.23 The empirical methods of the natural sciences should ground the symbols of myths in such external systems as the rituals, ceremonies, and totemic artifacts o f various cultures. Yet his method is in fact more akin to philosophy or to ideology than to science. The unity in human thought that he postulates is never proved scientifically. As an ethnologist, he collects many myths and relates them. But the myths are all related in different fashions. Engineering, as representative of the sciences, is contrasted to bricolage, the resourceful ingenuity, of myths. In engineering, knowledge is the systematic tracking of truth through the application of form al logic. By contrast, in bricolage, one sign leads to another sign24 playfully erasing its predecessor— as exem plified in the oral myths he selects, where no source can be assigned to discover what the author was trying to communicate.

THE REFUSAL OF THE EXISTENTIAL DIALECTIC As we have seen, Levi-Strauss’ focus on internal structure precludes history. Jean-Paul Sartre, who advocates the struggle with historical factors as recognition that the human situation

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entails decisions about commitment to others, denounces the Levi-Straussian method for its lack of historical dialectic.25 Levi-Strauss claims that Marxism has been one o f his handmaidens. He even insists that the binary tensions he finds in myths are developments of the dialectic he learned from M arxism. However, the M arxist Sartre objects to the facile equation of binary with dialectic. The dialectic is an involved response to the situation of a given people or tribe among whom the myths continue to be narrated because of the group’s meaning for the myths. The meanings that LeviStrauss discovers are not connected either to the peoples who narrate the myths or to their listeners. The Sartrean view of the dialectic is more closely em ulated by V ernant and his colleagues. Levi-Strauss identifies his structuralist presentation of m yth as a "totalizing" enterprise. By totalizing he means that his m ethod is not focused by the teleological vision of a single philosophical or ideological position such as existentialism. Instead, he is concerned with "a total understanding: if you don’t understand everything, you don’t explain anything ... [about] this totalitarian ambition of the savage mind."26 This am bitious prospectus often provides analogies between what he calls the "system" of myth and the systems o f language and music. By system he means a closed netw ork of com m unication w ithin which structures have specific functions in linking the levels of meaning. In language there is a three-level paradigm linking phonemes (basic units of sound producing meaning), words, and sentences. By contrast, m yths lack the equivalent of phonemes but do have words and sentences. Music has counterparts to phonemes and sentences but not to words. By matching and contrasting these three systems, Levi-Strauss strives to learn more about the totality o f myth as a system of communication. The Russian linguist Nikolai Troubetskoy provided the model in the early 1930s for phonemic analysis. He discovered that phonemes are context-sensitive. Levi-Strauss seeks to explain why the narrative contexts of myths preclude the counterparts to phonemes in language. Early in his career he pondered the existence of mythemes, basic units of myths

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translatable from one myth to another. However, his abstractions from the myths produce the structures rather than the basic constituents from which the words and sentences of myths are composed. Marcel Detienne, a Hellenist by interest and a philologist by training, especially objects to the Oedipus myth as an example of the totalizing system of myths because of Levi-Strauss’ assumption of "a chain of relations, a succession of concepts, a system of signifying oppositions distributed on different planes, at various semantic levels."27 The analysis of the Asdiwal myth is an example of how LeviStrauss implements such a totalizing vision for myth.

THE ETHNOGRAPHIC CONTEXT Levi-Strauss gives an exceptional example of the "ethnographic context" in his structuralist analysis of a North Am erican Indian myth. First published in 1958, "The Story of Asdiwal" ("Le Geste d’Asdiwal") is reprinted in the second volume of his Structural Anthropology. The chief distinguishing features of this presentation are the geographical, sociological, economic, and cosmological settings for the Tsimshian and Nisqa Indian tribes who invented this myth. The four versions of the myth, three Tsimshian and one Nisqa, were collected by the American anthropologist Franz Boas at the turn of the century. The Tsimshian and Nisqa Indians inhabit the Nass and Skeena River Valleys of British Columbia just south of Alaska. They are matrilineal (kinship determ ined by the mother) tribes with patrilocal (living with the father) families. The Tsimshian rely prim arily upon candlefish and salmon for food. Because the Skeena River freezes, they are driven seasonally by periods of severe famine to roam toward the Nass River Valley, where the Nisqa live in villages year round. Levi-Strauss, who himself provides this setting, claims that the setting is related "dialectically" to the Indian tribes because the details of the story are not simply mimetic reflections of the lives of the peoples in the area. Instead, the ethnographic setting stands in a particular

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relationship to the peoples’ lives. Let us look at the m yth itself before considering Levi-Strauss’ analysis. It is w inter in the Skeena valley, and fam ine reigns. A m other and a daughter, both widows because o f the food crisis and separated because of their marriages, decide to meet midway up the river. The mother heads eastward and the daughter westward. D uring their meeting a stranger, Hatsenas ("bird of good omen"), appears; provides food for the women; and marries the younger one, who gives birth to Asdiwal ("crosser of mountains," "to be in danger," and a name for a thunderbird). The father gives Asdiwal equipm ent with magical powers to overcome the trials o f life. One day a white she-bear lures Asdiwal to the home of its father, the sun. Asdiwal marries the bear’s sister, the Evening Star. The couple descend to earth, where Asdiwal has an affair w ith a woman from his village. Evening Star leaves him, and Asdiwal m arries the daughter of a village chief. Her brothers argue w ith Asdiwal over the respective merits of sea hunters and m ountain hunters. Asdiwal demonstrates him self a superior hunter. The brothers take their sister and abandon Asdiwal. Four other brothers, also sea hunters, meet Asdiwal at the R iver Nass, where he also meets and marries their sister. Asdiwal and his brothers-in-law go hunting on the sea. A storm comes up and sweeps Asdiwal onto a rock from which he is rescued by a mouse who takes him to the subterranean home of the sea lions. R eturning home to his wife and son, he longs to return home to the Skeena Valley. However, he forgets his magic snowshoes and dies stranded on the m ountains, where he is turned into stone. Levi-Strauss notes that this myth has very little value as a docum entary source for the lives of the Tsimshian and Nisqa Indians. He thus rejects the claims for myth as a historical record. Levi-Strauss, not the myth, provides details about the lives of the tribes. In this way Levi-Strauss sets up a series of contradictions both w ithin the story and w ithin the actual lives of the narrators. These binary oppositions provide the bases for diagrams, or "schemata," of four levels on which the story can be generated by a series of unresolved oppositions. These four levels are the geographic, the techno-econom ic, the

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sociological, and the cosmological. Levi-Strauss discovers that the story has a series of unresolved oppositions between low and high, earth and heaven, man and woman, endogamy and exogamy, mountain and sea hunting, and land and water. The contradictions are resolved by analogy to the system of music:

But these sequences are organized on planes at d ifferent levels of abstraction in accordance with schemata, which exist simultaneously, superimposed one upon the other; just as a melody composed for several voices is held w ithin bounds by tw odimensional constraints: first by its own melodic line, which is horizontal, and second by the contrapuntal schemata, which are vertical.28 Through this explanation of the different levels in the Asdiwal m yth Levi-Strauss is able to demonstrate the "contrapuntal" resolution of its contradictions in the symmetrical patterns that form the structure of the story. In his analysis of the Asdiwal m yth, rather than proceeding from a myth to a culture, Levi-Strauss does the reverse. He enriches the understanding of the contradictions w ithin a myth by reference to the cultural context. For example, the exogamous marriages o f the Tsimshian are questioned by the presentation of an Asdiwal who cannot succeed in marriage, despite his three attempts to marry outside his clan. Asdiwal must go off alone to find peace in his homeland. These unsuccessful marriages are also linked to the m atrilineal but patrilocal familial structure of the Tsimshians. A lthough power passes through the mother, the fam ily lives with the father, who is probably driven far from home in his search for food. Asdiwal provides a "dialectical" model for the Tsimshian men, who are fishermen. He is a mountain hunter and has magical powers to help him succeed. It is the sea which threatens him and maroons him on a rock, where he is rescued by a lowly female mouse. Yet she is female— the source of continuity and family, according to the Tsimshian. Asdiwal roamed to the Nass River, as do the Tsimshian

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seasonally. However, he was more resourceful as a m ountain hunter and could ascend (to the sun) and descend (to the world o f the sea lions) rather than merely roam east-w est or no rth south, as did the Tsimshians. Asdiwal is thus a m ythical hero who incarnates the duality of life in N orthern British Columbia:

Everything seems to suggest that, as it draws to its close, the apparent narrative (the sequences) tends to approach the latent content of the m yth (the schemata). It is a convergence which is not unlike that which the listener discovers in the final chords of a symphony.29 As the conductor of a symphony, Levi-Strauss is also obligated to encompass the four divergent versions w ithin his reading of Asdiwal. Once again, it is a mythical world draw ing the outside world into itself and its structures. The life experiences of the Tsimshian and Nisqa Indians serve to provide Levi-Strauss with the inform ation to constitute his paradigm for the Asdiwal myth. The relationship of ethnographic context to myth is a closely knit one. The analysis of Asdiwal remains an anomaly among L eviStrauss’ analyses. Fittingly, it is the one that inspired the contextualist school of m yth analysis. Marcel D etienne, who objects to Levi-Strauss’ indifference to context in his reading of Oedipus, recommends the Asdiwal model to classicists. The other influences of Levi-Strauss on the contextualists have been largely terminological. For example, Nicole Loraux uses Levi-Strauss’ autochthonous origins, homology, and totemism. NOTES

1. Claude Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, I (Paris: Plon, 1958), pp. 239-43.

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2. Claude Levi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (New York: Shocken, 1979), p. 40. 3. Rene G irard, "Systeme du delire," Critique, XXVIII, 306 (November 1972), 976. My translation of: "La psychanalyse n’a pas a inventer l’Oedipe, disent-ils [Deleuze and G uattari], les sujets se presentent chez leurs psychiatres deja tout oedipianise." 4. Lowell Edmunds, Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 47. Edmunds catalogues seventy-six analogues of the Oedipus myth narrated in thirty-one languages ranging from Albanian to Zulu. 5. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structural, p. 240: "par l’ensemble de toutes ses versions." 6. Ibid., p. 180. 7. Jean-Pierre Vernant, "The Lame Tyrant," in Vernant and Pierre V idal-N aquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone, 1988), p. 210. 8. Louis G ernet and Andre Boulanger, Le Genie grec dans la religion (Paris: Albin Michel, 1932), p. 77. 9. Edm und Leach, Genesis as Myth and Other Essays (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971), p. 86. 10. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, p. 236. 11. Claude Levi-Strauss, "Structure and Form," tr. Monique Layton, in A riadna and Richard M artin, ed., Theory and History o f Folklore (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 167.

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12. Roman Jakobson, "Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb," in his Selected Writings, vol. 1 (The Hague: M outon, 1962), p. 150. 13. Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in S tyle in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: M IT Press, 1960), p. 353. 14. Levi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, p. 11. 15. Ibid., p. 8. 16. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, p. 17. 17. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage M ind, tr. not given (Chicago: U niversity of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 22. 18. Paul R icoeur, The C onflict o f Interpretations, tr. Don Ihde (Evanston: N orthw estern U niversity Press, 1974), p. 28. 1 9 .1 thank R obert Segal for explaining the later inclusion of Levi-Strauss into R icoeur’s analysis o f meaning. 20. Claude Levi-Strauss, Totemism, tr. Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), p. 78. 21. Paul Ricoeur, "Structure et herm eneutique," Esprit, X X I, 332 (November 1963), 600. 22. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, tr. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: H arper & Row, 1969), p. 12. 23. See the discussion of this scientific claim by L eviStrauss in M ireille M arc-Lipiansky, Le Structuralisme de Levi-Strauss (Paris: Payot, 1973), pp. 240ff.

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24. See my essay " The Semiotics of L ev i-S trau ss: Communication as Translation," in The Semiotic Web— 1989, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (New York: Mouton de G ruyter, 1990), pp. 61-88, for a discussion of Levi-Strauss’ model for myths as a source of semiotic research. 25. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris: G allim ard, 1960), p. 104ff. For a discussion of the stakes in the Sartre/Levi-Strauss debate see Lawrence Rosen, "Language, History, and the Logic of Inquiry in Levi-Strauss and Sartre," History and Theory, X, 3 (1971), 290ff. 26. Levi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, p. 17. 27. Marcel Detienne, Dionysos Slain, tr. M ireille and Leonard M uellner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 7. 28. Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Story of Asdiwal," in his Structural Anthropology, vol. 2, tr. Monique Layton (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p. 161. 29. Ibid., p. 165.

C hapter Four VERNANT: A LOGIC OF THE EQUIVOCAL

O f all the various forms of structuralism that he has inspired, Levi-Strauss feels closest to that of Jean-P ierre V ernant and his colleagues at the G ernet C enter.1 However, the word "structuralism" brings with it a Weltanschauung— an "ideology" as the Indo-European mythologist Georges Dumezil would call it— that Vernant does not accept. The "ideology" entails linguistic theories derived from Ferdinand de Saussure and applied to a "structuralist" agenda principally by Barthes, Levi-Strauss, the philosopher and historian of ideas Michel Foucault (1926-1984), the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan(19011981), and the M arxian philosopher Louis Althusser (19181990).2 V ernant’s disavowal of "structuralism" stems from his own penchant for avoiding controversy, especially in the wake of the hostile reception by classicists to Levi-Strauss’ reading of the Oedipus myth. Although Vernant has been evenhanded in his appraisal of Levi-Strauss’ "structuralist" approach to myths, he prefers to be distinguished for using "structural analysis"3 in combination with a contextualist approach to myth. He characterizes his approach as contextualist as well as structuralist. In a 1966 conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins Vernant identified context as the situation whereby "every message implies a necessary complicity between the interlocutor and his audience."4 Without making specific references to the survivalist views of myth by Barthes and Levi-Strauss, Vernant elaborated his own position on the

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context of myth by identifying the "semantic fields" o f law, religion, and politics. These semantic fields or contexts are bundles o f meanings understood differently by both the interlocutor and the audience of myths. By precisely identifying which meanings are pertinent to either the interlocutor or the audience, V ernant provides a logic for the contradictions in myths. Meaning can vary because o f the context of a myth. R ather than visually presenting a diagram fo r the binary structures of contradictions or of the variances in meanings, as Levi-Strauss is wont to do, V ernant describes the situations in which equivocation is valued by the Greeks. A lthough trained as a philosopher, V ernant labeled him self a historian in approaching this notion of context and its relationship to structural analysis. Jean-P ierre V ernant has long concentrated on the area of the rising G reek city-states. He takes a special interest in the 6th century B.C., when the G reek tradition o f logos, a tendency to use philosophical discourse in the discussion of cultural issues, began to distinguish itself from muthos, the narratives of the gods intervening in human affairs. A t the same time the G reek city-states were evolving. This situation arose just after the popularity of the theatrical genre of tragedy, specifically as practiced by Aeschylus and Sophocles, which continued for about one hundred years. Oedipus R ex especially enjoyed a receptive audience in the early fifth century (c. 420 B.C.). Within this setting V ernant sets out to answer the same question time and again: "What is the link between the semantic space revealed by structural analysis as the m yth’s intellectual fram ew ork and the sociohistorical context in which the myth was produced?"5 By "semantic space" V ernant means the significance attributed to concepts such as justice, cunning intelligence, the home, among others in a given fram ew ork, that is, the m yth or story about the G reek setting for the given concept. Each m yth groups together interwoven concepts crucial to the city-state and to the lives of the Greeks. This grouping is "the semantic space" in which equivocation, or ambivalence, governs. In fifth century Greece the Sophists, itinerant teachers, did not abandon the fabulous muthos in favor of the discursive

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advantages of of logos: "the tension remains: the contradictions are not overcome and cannot be .... There is not yet any A ristotelian logic because, for the Sophists, one discourse is as good as the other."6 Although V ernant respects this attitude toward ambivalence, he does have a logical method to present the integration of semantic space in the sociohistorical context o f myths. By contrast, Levi-Strauss prefers to ignore the context in favor of cross-cultural, cognitive categories which point to common ways of thinking. V ernant’s method supplements the grid used by LeviStrauss. V ernant identifies three components in a text: the syntax or logic, the semantic content, and the structural context or the structure of its intellectual world.7 The first two components are basically the same as the syntagmatic and paradigm atic axes of Levi-Strauss. The third dimension is the expansion of the semantic content into discussions o f the relationships between myth and its audience or interlocutor. The semantic fields are similar to Levi-Strauss’ setting for the Asdiwal myth in economics, geography, social and familial history, and cosmology. Whereas the Asdiwal setting did not address the myth as w ritten document, the semantic fields represent meanings of a w ritten culture which survives as the work of plural documents, effectively providing a chorus about the nature of the semantic fields in which the written m yth occurs. For V ernant, these semantic fields are likewise diverse disciplines which specify the uniqueness of the heritage within which a w ritten myth occurs. He has collaborated with Marcel Detienne on several projects in which philology is the central organizing semantic field around which can be explained an individual myth and whole mythologies— collections of myths brought together for a specific purpose, as with Hesiod’s Theogony. The words metis ("cunning intelligence") and oikos ("familial territory"), for example, are explored for their special meanings in the myths of the Greeks and provide rich commentaries on the cultures which valued these concepts in varying ways over time. In his expansion of the semantics of Greek myths Vernant has a vision of the spatial organization of the structure of the G reek intellectual world. He has a special affinity for

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geometry and the implications for the organization of space on G reek culture and its myths. For example, just as the new political idea of equality (isonomia: "equilibrium") is presented by V ernant as implying a geometrical view of the city w ith the egalitarian, symmetrical, and reversible forum as its center, so the myth of Hestia, goddess of the hearth, implies a static view of fam ily and territory associated with the central place in the home o f the hearth as oikos and Hestia’s sacred place. Thus for V ernant the context is a cultural, spatial, and cultural index which expands upon the horizontal and vertical axes of L eviStrauss’ semantic interpretations. ARBITRARY CHOICES In his overview of myth analysis8 V ernant singles out Levi-Strauss as the key structuralist. V ernant does not m ention Barthes although the subtitle of his essay "Myth Today" makes an allusion to Barthes that most French readers o f V ernant could not miss. The essay presents three kinds of contem porary myth analysis: symbolism (e.g., Ernst Cassirer), functionalism (e.g., Bronislaw Malinowski), and structuralism (e.g., Levi-Strauss). V ernant focuses on the structuralism of Levi-Strauss after acknowledging that "the most spectacular progress in contem porary mythological research has been made by the anthropologists and ethnologists rather than by G reek scholars."9 Like his classicist colleagues, V ernant finds L eviStrauss rather arbitrary in his choice of the Oedipus myth and his selection of phrases for the "mythemes" around which the semantic structure of the myth is organized. In addition, V ernant objects to the implication by Levi-Strauss that any m yth may be used as a tool for the logical resolution of unsolvable contradictions in life. For V ernant, the use of any m yth by outsiders violates the place of that myth w ithin its own semantic fields. Each myth has a specific function w ithin its culture. To appropriate the myths of others, without consideration for the values that are attributed to these myths, is an act of aggression against the originating culture. V ernant introduces his variant of "structural analysis," which I call the Contextualist School, as the basis for the

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C enter for the Comparative Study of Ancient Societies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris during the m id1970s. It was Pierre V idal-N aquet who, as Vernant’s successor as D irector of the Center, had the Center named after Louis G ernet in 1989. V ernant clearly distinguishes his interest in myth from that of Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss focuses on oral myths, which generally come from "cold," prim itive societies, in which time is not stressed, rather than on "hot societies," which have w ritten myths and have come to grips with history. Vernant thinks that both written and oral myths ought to be subject to myth analysis. He prefers to separate w ritten myths from oral myths because w ritten myths are "governed by more varied and adaptable rules than oral composition of the formulaic type."10 In addition, a w ritten myth allows for a more rigorous, more strictly ordered analysis than an oral myth. V ernant is concerned with the changes made on myths once they become w ritten. For Levi-Strauss, the distinction appears to have no importance. In this spirit, Vernant especially concentrates on the transposition of w ritten myth into tragedy, a specific literary form practiced by the Greeks during the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. Although Levi-Strauss focuses on an originally oral myth— Oedipus— that was transposed into w ritten form by no less than Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, the French ethnologist does not specify a single w ritten version and instead insists upon using all the variants of the myth. In effect, he makes the Oedipus myth into an oral tradition known by all and not limited to a single written document. He even includes Freud’s interpretation as just another variant of the myth itself. V ernant, however, presents the tragedy of Oedipus as a w ritten version of myth. We are reminded that Sophocles, Euripides (Phoenician Women), and Aeschylus (Oedipus) added details such as Oedipus’ exile and his death to Homer’s version, which portrays Oedipus dying as King of Thebes. Those details not only enrich the myth but provide specific examples of the changes in the story. Levi-Strauss chooses which details conform to his presentation from any version of the Oedipus myth while ignoring the differences in the

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variants. V ernant’s training as historian and philologist helps him realize that "there is no such thing as myth in the untouched state."11 He is intent upon recognizing the diversity of each variant whereas Levi-Strauss seeks only similarities. One key distinction made by Vernant is the difference between myth and mythology. As opposed to a single, unconnected story, or myth, a mythology is a unified, interconnected group of stories with internal coherence. Similalry, Levi-Strauss sought internal coherence among myths that led him to the theory of a single human spirit represented by mythology. V ernant, however, maintains that each variant of a myth must be placed w ithin its distinctive m ythology, which gives the myth its meaning. V ernant compares a mythology with a philosophy because of the rigor and complexity of both. The myth of Oedipus has belonged to various mythologies (e.g., those of Homer and Hesiod) in its many variants. Therefore V ernant separates his approach from that of Levi-Strauss on the issue of looking only for similarities: "if synonymity is the rule, then mythology in all its diversity can no longer be regarded as a system with meaning."12 V ernant agrees with Levi-Strauss that myths have both surface and underlying meanings. He acknowledges that L eviStrauss has brought "a turning point and a new departure"13 to myth analysis. V ernant concurs with Levi-Strauss in his refutation of the Freudian reading as misguided. However, V ernant gives different reasons. For Levi-Strauss, Freud erred in lim iting Oedipus to the model for the triangulation of the family. For Vernant, Freud was not historically oriented enough and thus distorted the myth. V ernant wants to use Levi-Strauss’ Asdiwal analysis as a model with its "precise and exhaustive knowledge o f the m yth’s cultural and ethnographical context."14 With this model in mind, V ernant returns to the Oedipus m yth in order to apply his knowledge of the G reek ethnographic context to Levi-Strauss’ comments on the generational patterns in the Oedipus myth. Levi-Strauss is the first to have pointed out the physical similarities in three generations of Labdacids down

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through Oedipus. All three— Labdacos, Laius, and Oedipus— share a common destiny of lameness: a lopsided gait, the lack of symmetry between the two sides of the body, and a defect in one foot.15 This remark is a key for V ernant in unlocking the intellectual code peculiar to the Oedipus myth.

OEDIPUS WITHOUT THE COMPLEX MASK V ernant’s Oedipus is an expansion of the four mythemes presented by Levi-Strauss. Those four mythemes are m anifestations of the four poles among which the myth oscillates: for and against human birth, for and against chthonic origins. For Vernant, ambivalence is also the prim ary structure of the Oedipus myth, especially in its application to G reek tragedies. Vernant does not, however, portray the ambivalence in as neatly diagrammatic a fashion as does LeviStrauss. The contexts of law, religion, and philosophy help explain V ernant’s view of the ambivalence in the character Oedipus, discussed prim arily in three essays o f M yth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece.16 Vernant introduces two G reek historical practices that played a crucial role in the tragic variations of the Oedipus myth: the pharmakos, or scapegoat ritual, and the practice of ostracism. The scapegoat ritual has been extensively discussed within the context of JudeoChristian culture by the Franco-A m erican scholar Rene G irard (b. 1923),17 who presents the scapegoat as the victim o f the communal human practice of triangulated desire. For V ernant, the institution of the scapegoat as a G reek custom at about the same time as tragedy helps explain Oedipus’ banishm ent and suicide in Sophocles’ tragic trilogy. In addition, the practice of ostracism, voted by a m ajority of the G reek parliam ent, made the scapegoat ritual into a vehicle for ridding a community of a political threat. These historical items contribute to what V ernant calls his method of historical psychology, adapted from his psychologist colleague at the Ecole pratique, Ignace M eyerson.18 This method is offered as an alternative to the Freudian analysis of myth as the expression of a psychological complex. The

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Oedipus complex was proposed by Freud to explain the triangular relationship of mother, father, and child. Freud had read Sophocles. He applied his reading of the myth to the case of a child’s attachm ent to the parent of the opposite sex and hostility to the other parent. V ernant agrees with Levi-Strauss that Freud’s comments on the Oedipus myth constitute a new variant o f the m yth rather than an interpretation of the myth. F reud’s interpretation is not sufficiently contextual for V ernant. Freud, for example, derives the meaning o f the Oedipus m yth from the emotions that the play arouses in the spectators. F reud would have us believe that "by killing his father and m arrying his m other, Oedipus is fulfilling a childhood desire of our own that we strive to forget."19 However, V ernant m aintains that the Oedipus in the tragedy does not m anifest an "Oedipus complex" because he does not show any feelings at all toward Jocasta. According to V ernant, "if Oedipus had an Oedipus complex it would have been in his relationship to his first m other [Merope]."20 Vernant believes that a psychoanalytic view of the myth distorts rather than illuminates our understanding of the myth. H istorical psychology, by contrast, combines the best of two disciplines to help portray the ambivalence at the heart o f the tragic rendition of the Oedipus myth. For Vernant, the riddle is at the center of the Oedipus myth. Oedipus, the solver of riddles, cannot solve the riddle of his own identity. Hence there is ambivalence at the core of the myth. The very name "Oedipus" can be philologically linked to a riddle because of its two possible root meanings, or etymons: the G reek oida ("I know") and pous ("foot"). The linking of these two etymons in the person of Oedipus leads to a tension that is both intellectual and physiological. Oedipus is driven to know his true identity while hobbled by his lameness, itself part of both his heritage and his damnation because the lame Labdacos and the clumsy, left-handed Laius are part o f the indication that the Labdacid genus will not be perpetuated. As Oedipus stubbornly pursues more and more complete selfknowledge, he is also realizing the physiological fate o f the limp which makes him exceptional and increases the likelihood

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of his being ostracized as a scapegoat. The scapegoat ritual {pharmakos) was an annual event in Athens in which a parade was held to purify men and women through the identification of two scapegoats. Likewise the political institution of ostracism was invented at the end of the 6th century B.C. and entailed a ten-year tem porary exile. As V ernant seeks an explanation for the origin of tragedies and especially the tragic alteration of Oedipus on the Sophoclean stage, the combination of the pharmakos and the ostracism ritual help explain the additional details added by Sophocles. In the Sophoclean tragedies Oedipus’ exile and subsequent suicide become significant additions explained by the social threat of the ambivalence in his condition. By focusing on the work of the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, V ernant brings his own detailed knowledge of the historical setting to explain the ambivalent riddle at the center of the tragic myth of Oedipus as savior and assassin, divine king and tyrant, father of the land and criminal, and finally the promise of a new royal family and a curse fulfilled in that very family. The contradictions are the results of Oedipus’ constant questioning to find out who he is, and ironically they constitute paradoxes that society cannot bear to maintain. In the period when logos was evolving and muthos was increasingly disparaged, Oedipus became a scapegoat and had to commit suicide. The need of Greek society for reasonable solutions precluded the ambivalent presentations of myths. G reek tragedy appeared at about the same time that the city-state and its laws were being established and debated. This historical coincidence affects the presentation of Oedipus on the Greek stage. The riddle of Oedipus’ name has its parallel in the structure of the tragedy, which for V ernant is also a riddle in its presentation, developm ent, and resolution.21 That very riddle unwinding on stage was a m irror of the political setting of Greek society as it evolved away from religious myths and toward rational, philosophical systems for its social models. The stage anticipated the forum as a setting for presenting the human drama of politics. Once the legal apparatus was formally in place in Greece, tragedy gradually decreased in popularity as politics favored the

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discursive techniques of logos and belittled muthos as a fanciful product of the religious imagination. Human law replaced divine law as the guiding principle for hum an conduct. The divine riddle gave way to a human discussion of compromise and equilibrium , a heritage that Athens obtained from its mythical origins which could not be rejected: And when Athena establishes the Council o f the Judges on Areopagus, she repeats this theme, word for word. In establishing this rule as the im perative which her city must obey, the goddess emphasizes that the good is situated between two extremes, the City being based on a difficult accord between opposing powers which must find an equilibrium w ithout destroying each other.22 While G reek tragedy was popular, Oedipus represented the lameness o f the political system to find the means to legislate that accord. The ambivalence of Oedipus, as V ernant portrays him, extends to the lineage, marriage, power, and destiny of the G reeks also caught in trying to work out the relationships w ith what they knew about law and how they could reasonably im plem ent it. Through the methods of historical psychology, V ernant gives us an Oedipus also caught in the throes of his own duplicitous name. In seeking self-know ledge (oida) and a grounding for his lameness ("swollen foot": oidos\ pous), he is representative of the rational society favoring logos to extricate itself from the chaos of muthos. Developing L eviStrauss’ suggestion that lameness, stam mering, and forgetfulness express blocked channels of com m unication, V ernant presents Oedipus as overcoming the lim itations of straight walking and thinking only to fall farther when he does obtain the awesome answers he seeks to his riddles.

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CEN TERIN G STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS To abet the continuous studies of classical mythology V ernant founded the Center for the Comparative Study of A ncient Societies within the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. During the mid-1960s V ernant began to rally some of his colleagues at the Ecole Pratique to the cause of incorporating structural analysis into classical philology and scholarship. He began working with Marcel Detienne, who had already considerable philological expertise in Greek. V ernant was intent on moving from the surface text of myths "to the structural fram ework that provides the overall key we can use to decipher a veritable system of thought not, at every level, immediately accessible to the habitual working of our minds."23 The Center has become a forum for discussing a "structural framework" w ithin traditional classical scholarship. The accessibility of the structural fram ework is also at issue because for V ernant as well as for Levi-Strauss the crucial functions and meanings of myths do not reside at the surface level. Instead, the surface must be probed for indicators about where else to look. According to Vernant, two factors can facilitate that search: 1) historical distance from antiquity and 2) the comparison of G reek myths with those of other cultures. Both of these factors have been inspired by Levi-Strauss and yet prepare a new era in the structural analysis of myths as they are allied with the contextual methods of the G ernet Center. Vernant identifies the central contextualist problem for the study o f G reek myths as the evolution of the relationship between muthos and logos. Philological study determines that "the G reek word muthos means formulated speech, w hether it be a story, a dialogue, or the enunciation of a plan ... does not originally stand in contrast to logoi, a term that has a closely related semantic significance and that is concerned with the d ifferen t forms of what is said."24 However, thanks to Thucydides (431-404 B.C.), historical reporting was invented to counter the fabulous elements of myths. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) continued to advocate logos as representative of a new kind of discourse used by historians and philosophers to

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convey truth by rules of demonstration and clarity rather than, as in myth, allegorically and indirectly. The evolution of the prim acy of logos w ithin G reek society is crucial to the metamorphoses of myths into the subjects of tragedies. V ernant is especially interested in the simultaneous emergence in Athens of the city, its legal system, and tragedy. A pplying his theory of overlapping semantic fields, he observes that "the tragic poets use these vocabularies of law, religion, and politics, playing on the differences between semantic fields, contrasting them in order to emphasize the am biguity of certain notions."25 V ernant and his colleagues at the C enter explore these ambiguities for commentaries on the nature o f G reek society and its myths. Besides Levi-Strauss, V ernant has been generally inspired by two mentors: Louis G ernet and Ignace Meyerson. Some of his critics identify two Vernants in these influences— the good one listening to G ernet and the bad one following M eyerson.26 In actuality, both figures shaped V ernant’s own vision of a contextualist structural analysis. On the one hand G ernet was a historian of Greek law who gave the contextualist school insights into the evolution w ithin G reek society of such concepts as right, morality, law, and justice through his precise definitions of the philological meanings of G reek terms. His lectures and articles27 are cited by all the members of the Center as they seek clues for the legal contexts of myths, tragedies, and other Greek phenomena. V ernant admits that, although G ernet did not write anything on tragedy himself, his mastery of philology, law, social, political, and economic history provided the bases for generations of scholars to study G reek tragedy. Even Meyerson acknowledged the role that G ernet had in the psychological circles of Paris during his lifetim e.28 On the other hand Meyerson, while less widely known than G ernet, guided Vernant in bringing together the methods of history and psychology. The combination of the two disciplines gives Vernant the opportunity to move between the context and the text of a myth with ease and insight. For example, his discovery of the scapegoat rituals and political ostracism becomes incisive for understanding the drives of

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Oedipus, who would have self-knowledge even at the price of the realization of his fate as a "lame tyrant." The influence of both G ernet and Meyerson has become crucial in the research by all the members of the Center as they develop the implications of V ernant’s model of structural analysis. V ernant and V idal-N aquet have defined the fundam ental purpose of structural analysis as "breaking] down the mythological account so as to pick out the prim ary elements in it and then set[ting] these beside those to be found on other versions of the same myth or in different collections of legends."29 One of those prim ary elements is the characteristic called "cunning intelligence" (metis). Vernant and Detienne have collaborated on a book describing the implications of this concept for Greek culture. Cunning intelligence is conventionally considered to be the trait which Odysseus dem onstrated throughout Homer’s O dyssey (c. 700 B.C.). V ernant and Detienne have discovered the consistent valorization of cunning intelligence in the myths o f Zeus, Antilochus, Hephaestus, and of course Athena, the goddess of wisdom and protectress of Odysseus. Once again, the structuralist attitude, inspired by the early attachm ent of Detienne for "structuralist" methods, is to go beyond the obvious in the search for a meaning residing at some level of language other than its literal sense. Their definition for cunning intelligence is worth recalling: it implies a complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behavior which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety o f m ind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism , various skills, and experience acquired over the years.30 V ernant and Detienne see themselves as archaeologists probing the surfaces o f myths for other examples o f cunning intelligence as a pervasive value in the G reek world. V ernant’s work on cunning intelligence also considers the condition of women in Greek society. His work prepares the way for fem inist scholars such as Nicole Loraux to do more

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sophisticated inquiries into G reek womanhood. V ernant as well as Detienne and V idal-N aquet incorporates inform ation on G reek women in his research. While gender research is not their principal aim, their interest in such issues as Hestia as the goddess of the hearth (Vernant), the women disciples of Dionysus (Detienne), and the similar legal rights o f G reek women and slaves (V idal-N aquet) makes it easier for fem inists to explore an area which has been opened for discussion. V ernant and Detienne point out that the word metis comes from the goddess of that name who was swallowed by Zeus upon her pregnancy with A thena so that he could possess all of A thena’s traits of wily intellectual sophistication and preclude their being used against him. The incarnation of this positive characteristic in a goddess is crucial since "certain aspects of metis tend to associate it with the disloyal trick, the perfidious lie, treachery— all of which are the despised weapons of women and cowards."31 The prejudicial association of cunning intelligence and women was part o f a much larger ideology invented by G reek men about women. V ernant argues that Hesiod’s narrative of the m ythical creation of the first woman, Pandora, by Zeus was used as a justification for the political situation of G reek women. G reek women were not citizens and so did not have the right to vote. Pandora was Zeus’ response to Prometheus, the Titan, who challenged the Olympian gods by stealing fire for hum anity and by tricking Zeus with the division of an anim al’s meat (for humans) and its innards for the gods. Meat, fire, and women in Hesiod’s Theogony are thus tightly knit. Zeus has the last word: By creating her [woman], Zeus pulls o ff his master coup. He ends the game with Prometheus. The Titan can no longer respond .... The anthropoi [men as the single race of humanity] are forced into an ongoing confrontation and need to live with this " h a lf of themselves created for them with the intention of masking them what they are, andres [humanity divided into men and women].

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V ernant thus presents the mythical creation of woman as a scourge given to mankind by the gods. He might have added that both Zeus and Prometheus were using cunning intelligence well before the arrival of women, so that the G reek association of metis with feminine wile was especially unfair. V ernant’s study of the goddess Hestia, patroness of the hearth and the home, reveals the static ideal of G reek society, in contrast to the politically active Greek represented by the Hermes. The static ideal was protected by Hestia in the home, where the hearth became her altar and the familial center. She represented the disfranchised lot of Greek women, whose fixed position in the home was the basis for the organization of both fam ily and territory, as signified by the single Greek word for both concepts, oikos. The family and territorial rights associated with it were characterized by a division of labor, marriage, and consanguinity based on the opposition of the gods Herm es/H estia. V ernant notes that these two deities were associated with a chthonic rather than Olympian value system that im itated the placement of the members of G reek society. The lot of women was based upon assumptions about their place in the hearth represented as a closed and static center for women by the goddess Hestia. This closed fem inine space was constantly reaffirm ed by moral judgm ents of woman’s place such as that by the playwright M enander (342-289 B.C.): "a virtuous woman should stay at home, only light women appear in the streets."33 The political situation of women in the tragedies reflects the reality of their condition in society: Only men can be qualified representatives of the city; women are alien to political life. That is why the members of the chorus (not to mention the actors) are always and exclusively male. Even when the chorus is supposed to represent a group of young girls or women, as is the case in a whole series of plays, those who represent it are men, suitably disguised and masked.34

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V ernant’s insights help "unmask" Oedipus from the complex that Freud invented. However, the female masks worn by men on the stage are only mentioned by V ernant and referred to by his colleagues Nicole Loraux, Florence Dupont, and Suzanne Said in their situations of G reek women (see chapters seven and eight). V ernant is sensitive to the masculine dom ination of a woman’s identity,35 but he does not elaborate the issue. V ernant seeks to reveal the intersection of 1) m yth, 2) thought, and 3) society. These are the three points o f a triangle form ing the geometry of Greek society. For V ernant, geom etry holds the key to understanding the "whole" o f his contextual method. Geometry entails the organization of space and the relationships among the param eters of that space. V ernant places structural analysis w ithin a larger netw ork than the semantic structuralism of Levi-Strauss. He includes the 1) syntax and logic of a m yth, 2) the semantic content o f the same m yth, and 3) its structural context. In order to specify this tripartite influence on tragedy, V ernant speaks of the three historical aspects o f tragedy: social, aesthetic, and psychological. These aspects generally conform to the 1) semantic, 2) syntactic, and 3) contextual param eters of structural analysis and demarcate the social and cultural environm ent in which the individual in ancient G reece passed on and rejected myth by placing its story on the stage of tragedy.

M YTH AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL POWER According to V ernant, myth had an ambivalent status for the Greeks. Because of its dual status as a fiction (stories about the origins of the universe and hum anity) and an absurdity (divine explanations for human phenomena) myth held a tenuous role in Greek society. As a fiction, myth incorporated w ithin its stories the truth of reality. In G reek truth is aletheia. According to the German philosopher M artin Heidegger (1889-1976), the literal meaning (the privative a and the noun letheia) is "uncovering."36 V ernant never cites H eidegger,37 probably because of Heidegger’s political stigma or, more

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m undanely, because of his loose way of applying self-derived etymologies to G reek terms and concepts. Nevertheless, V ernant also understands structure to be something that is uncovered. For example, his presentation of m yth entails its opposition to what is not myth so that reality is the antonym that sets up m yth as a fiction. By determ ining what was reality for the Greeks, V ernant arrives at the fiction of myth. The struggle between muthos and logos took place in the sixth century B.C. In Ionia the pre-Socratic mathematicians Thales, A naxim ander, and Anaximenes advocated a new method of thinking (logos) to replace creation myths. Their alternative, according to Vernant, "sought to base the order of the world on relations of symmetry, equilibrium , and equality among the various elements that made up the cosmos."38 Thus geometry became the handmaiden of philosophy in the birth of Greek rationality. Parmenides of Miletus introduced the philosophical abstraction of Being and Knowing. Geom etry and philosophy allowed no place for muthos. V ernant notes three implications from the cosmologies associated with creation myths: 1) the universe is a hierarchy of power, and gods are distinguished in function, value, and rank; 2) the world emerges in dramatic fashion with gods; and 3) the power of the gods is monarchical over humans. In the Oedipus myth, for example, the deities Pelops and Hera (1) lay curses on the family of Laius for the rape of Chrysippus (2). Oedipus was being punished for his father’s crime by the hierarchically empowered gods (3). The new geometric order (isonomia) of equilibrium , order, and symmetry provided the parameters for Sophocles’ Oedipus to become subject to the human drama with the application of the scapegoat ritual, political ostracism, and finally suicide. Sophocles adds rational human order to provide a transition for the Oedipus myth as part of a new image of the world. The sense of justice ( dike) as divine will is no longer acceptable to the Greeks, who are now intent upon setting up a dem ocratic government in which human reason enables people to govern themselves. Once again, the shift from myth to tragedy reflects the shift from monarchy to democracy with consequent shifts in power and responsibility for action from gods to hum anity.

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Hesiod, together with Homer, provides V ernant w ith the source for the fictional distribution of power in G reek myth. In Works and Days Hesiod presents the "myth of the races," w hereby time proceeds though five stages, four metal deteriorating from the gold to the iron ages and one heroic age. V ernant interprets Hesiod’s time as cyclical rather than linear because "it is a time which consists not so much of a succession of moments, but rather o f a stratification o f layers, where the d ifferent ages are superimposed upon the other."39 This portrayal has been attacked by scholars as being a violation of Hesiod’s diachronic order.40 V ernant’s response is that, rather than opposing structure to chronology, he is showing their compatibility. Temporality can take a form other than that of mere linear sequence. The rhythm of the past is better understood if the myth of the races is seen as a series of genealogies rather than as a simple chronology. V ernant also stresses that the necessary counterpart to recollecting the past, as myths do, is to forget the present. In this way muthos becomes identified as fictive and cyclical; and the new rationality, by focusing on the eternally present, gets associated with linear reality. Myths retain the memory of what would otherwise be forgotten. The example of cunning intelligence, as distributed among the deities of Mt. Olympus, appears somewhat gratuitous at first glance. However, V ernant observes that "the distribution of power among the various figures in the pantheon inevitably entails some degree of sharing out this form of intelligence."41 This "sharing out"— for example, in H om er’s association of the goddess Athena with Odysseus— explains why cunning intelligence cannot be simply called fo rth by anyone at any time, as the proponents of logos expected of other kinds of human reasoning. The fictionalized accounts of muthos provide places for various kinds of human conduct. These places are imaginary, divine, or etiological locations which specify human behavior w ithin a certain context. V ernant especially presents G reek m yth as characterized by an order that geometry and philosophy would later develop into rules and precepts. Even

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the gods represent an order to be emulated by the human organization of power: Every god is defined by the network of relations which links him [sic] with and opposes him [sic] to the other deities included within a particular pantheon; and similarly, a single detail in a m yth is only significant by virtue of its place within the ordered system in which the myth itself belongs.42 This comment epitomizes the contextualist argum ent preferring a specifically G reek set of links to a universal view of linkage. V ernant observes a statue by the sculptor Phidias (b. 490 B.C.) in which twelve Greek gods are paired beneath Zeus on M ount Olympus. The pairing of Hestia and Hermes as divine counterparts to the human division of labor by gender reflects the G reek attitude toward "the ordered system." Hestia in fact represents the "dispersion of centralization"43 away from the monarchical system of Zeus and Hermes and toward the human arena, where another order, the city and its dem ocratic rule according to the principles of logos, was being form ed. The contextualist presentation of the struggle of myth with the rising values of the Greek city-state incorporates the strengths of three m ajor theories of myth while also adding another dimension. As noted, Vernant identifies these theories as the symbolic, the functionalist, and the structuralist. The symbolic theory, advanced by the German philosopher E rnst Cassirer (1874-1945) and the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (b. 1913), views the symbols in myths as expressions of abstract ideas. Symbols in myths are assumed to express abstract ideas and the universal powers of human reason underlying them. In taking the riddle of Oedipus’ identity as a symbol of ambivalence in Greek culture, Vernant follows the symbolists. The functionalist theory of myth was developed by the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942). Functionalists stipulate that each constituent elem ent of a cultural system is explained by its role within that system.

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Myths play a certain role integrally linked with varying aspects of the cultures in which they are found. The influence o f functionalism on V ernant is evident in his linkage of the m yth of Oedipus to various Greek rituals and, more generally, to fifth century G reek culture. Both the symbolic and the functionalist theories help V ernant to modify the third m ajor contem porary theory of myth: Levi-Strauss’ structuralism . V ernant acknowledges that Levi-Strauss introduced new questions fo r myth analysis. Levi-Strauss proposes the possibility of deciphering a m yth independent of the civilization that produced it. V ernant seeks not to reject structuralism but to combine it with symbolism and especially functionalism. The contextualist school uses philology to introduce a diachronic axis into myth analysis. Philology provides insight into the significance of written myths by tracing the evolution of terms. The word "Oedipus" as an am bivalent adaptation of the G reek words for "1 know" and "swollen foot" places the character’s riddle at the center of his own literal m ind-body problem based originally on his name. Philology is a historical discipline privileging past meanings as insights into the functioning of language. M yth is thus a palimpsest, a text on which several previous versions are inscribed im perfectly so that words from previous adaptations are still visible. V ernant’s task is to separate these versions and to com m ent upon which period each represents so that rem em bering, seeing, and knowing become interchangeable terms for the m odern reader of myth. In 1966 V ernant presented his contextualist theory to a seminar on structuralism at Johns Hopkins U niversity. We recall D errida’s comment about his disappointm ent with V ernant’s "realistic reading"44 of Oedipus R ex. That "realistic reading," however, distinguishes V ernant’s structural analysis from Levi-Strauss’ structuralism and provides the setting for appreciating the fiction o f m yth.

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THE ABSURDITY OF MYTH By opposition to what is rational, myth also expresses, according to V ernant, a distinctively Greek penchant for the absurd. The absurd is that which is ridiculously unreasonable to the modern reader such as the supposition that, in a happier time, men dined with the gods. Vernant seeks to explain such absurdities by giving insights into the reality of the G reek world. This reality was supported by myths that, by analogy, reaffirm ed the absurdities of the Hellenic world in a state of flux as the city, democracy, and tragedy were simultaneously evolving. Likewise the discursive rationality of philosophy and the analytical spirit of geometry were combining to analyze a world which had form erly been represented by myths of Olympian deeds. The pantheon passed on by Greek myths reflects "a symbolic language with its own intellectual ends."45 The Olympian pantheon displays what Vernant calls a "network of relations" not only among the deities themselves but often in collaboration with humanity. For example, A thena is both the goddess of wisdom and the patroness of Odysseus who becomes renowned for his cunning intelligence. The classificatory system of the myths is beneficial to order both w ithin a divine scheme and within human affairs. In the Oedipus myth the divine curses of Pelops and Hera are communicated through oracles. At Delphi, Oedipus consults an oracle to learn of his fate to kill his father and sleep with his mother. This inform ation spurs his departure from Corinth, where he assumes his parents, Polybus and M erope, reside, and his journey to Thebes, where his fate will be realized. For V ernant, human memory is "comparable to the journey which is mimed out in certain consultations of oracle: the descent of a living person into the underworld for the purpose of finding out— and seeing— what he wants to know."46 The fate of hum anity is thus intertw ined with the classificatory schemes of the gods, who control human access to the orderly schemes of fate. V ernant identifies the concepts that underlie this description of fate within myths. He is especially intrigued by the concepts of space, time, and number as they are wrapped

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in the folds of myth. Since humanity and divinity occupy distinct races, the differences and similarities in their lots are especially inform ative about the nature of hum anity. Hermes and Hestia are paired as part of the global social scheme to describe the active and passive lots of men and women in G reek society. The contest between Zeus and Prom etheus explains the differentiation of mankind (anthropoi) into an androgynous being (andres) divided by two genders— an explanation that must, of course, be offered as the justification by a m ale-dom inated society for the loss of a once single-gendered race that sat down to dine with the gods. The dual-value system is part of a much more universal trait of G reek myth: "thus myth brings into operation a form of logic which we may describe, in contrast to the logic of the philosophers, as a logic of the ambiguous, the equivocal, a logic of polarity."47 Equivocation lies at the heart of the absurdities found in G reek myths. The absurdities of G reek myths return us to D errida’s disappointm ent about the realism of Vernant’s Oedipus Rex. D errida’s disappointm ent should be understood to signify that V ernant does not fit the mold of expectations about French structuralism in the wake of Levi-Strauss. V ernant takes the semantic work of Levi-Strauss a step further by integrating the intellectual fram ework produced by the grids of structural analysis into the sociohistorical context of the myth. The myths about the noble death of a Greek w arrior attract V ernant’s "realism." Sparta advocated the various absurdities about glorifying the death of a w arrior into a m atter of prestige for the individual and for the glory of the city-state. Even Athens cultivated such a view of the noble death on a more restricted scale, as evidenced by the funeral orations investigated by V ernant’s colleague Nicole Loraux. Nevertheless, it is V ernant who first analyzes the G reek m ythical presentation of death. First of all, V ernant reminds us that "when women did not yet exist— before Pandora was created— death did not exist for men either."48 For the Greeks, women and death are afflictions to males brought on by the gods. The myth of the noble death allowed men to transcend both afflictions. A male

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w arrior could attain a privileged situation with the gods, thereby recalling that special time when men and gods had dined together. Death was thus not an affliction but a noble act. The w arrior status and a noble death were denied women. In these two conditions men could act as if Pandora had never come. O f course, the special status given to the noble death fostered an altruism and an idealism that helped to sustain the m ilitary career and to defend the city-state from its enemies. In this tw ilight zone of reality men often ceased to be part of the human race also. Vernant recalls the passages from the O dyssey where, in their desperation to obtain food, Odysseus’ shipmates from the domain of the sun-god resort to cannibalism. As V ernant concludes, in both cases these men cease to be human beings,49 on the one hand by not respecting the boundaries between men and gods and on the other hand by not respecting the boundaries between men and animals. This inhum anity of the warrior especially returns the absurdity of this myth to reality when the historians begin recording the social outrage over the many warriors whose bodies were left to rot on the field of battle because they had died in a losing cause. The abandoned cadaver signifies the inverse of the mythic noble death, the grounding of that absurdity in the reality of the horrors of war for the male who thinks that war gives him a privileged perspective.50 V ernant’s insistence upon portraying the "network of relations" both internal and external to myths entails such a reality, as "disappointing" or "unstructuralist" as it may appear to some. Nevertheless, his leadership in this variety of structural analysis has inspired others. One of these, Marcel D etienne, is the subject o f the next chapter.

NOTES 1. Claude Levi-Strauss with Didier Eribon, De Pres et de loin (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1988), p. 105.

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2. See chapters two through six of my French Structuralism (Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1990) for more elaborate presentations of these writers as the principal ideologists for this intellectual circle. 3. Jean-P ierre V ernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks, tr. not given (London: Routledge & R egan Paul, 1983), p. 220. 4. Jean-Pierre V ernant, "Greek Tragedy: Problems of Interpretation," in The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages o f Criticism and the Sciences o f Man, eds. R ichard M acksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U niversity Press, 1972), p. 273. 5. Jean-P ierre V ernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1988), p. 259. 6. V ernant, "Greek Tragedy," p. 289. 7. Jean-P ierre Vernant, "The M yth of Prometheus in Hesiod," in Myth, Religion