Page 116 - The Irony Board
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Into the Cosmos
Literalurgy
On judgement day,
The Jews surmise,
Organs intact
(Even their eyes)
Bodies will crawl
Out of their holes;
If not how could
The dead see scrolls?
Judeo-Christian doctrine abounds in absurdity and oppression. To
avoid any hint of partiality, I offer three of Gluckman’s works
commenting on the theory and practice of different divisions of that
over-arching theological tradition. The first is a somewhat
preposterous explanation of Hebraic eschatology. Unlike its
Christian and Moslem sequels, the Old Testament predicts a literal
rising of the dead when the final trumpet blows. Since the decay and
dissolution of deceased organisms must have been evident even to
the Patriarchs, why weren’t they satisfied with a purely spiritual and
conveniently invisible survival of the faithful until The End?
Because, Gluckman suggests, only real bodies can participate in the
real events scheduled for That Time. Disembodied souls can’t
experience rewards and punishments, at least those conceivable by
the authors of the Pentateuch. The new world will be re-initialized
by the messiah, using the same materials of which the old was
constructed, including human flesh. The final pun must have been
an irresistible tail wagging the other seven lines.
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