The feast of Pentecost has usually been associated typologically to the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. But, the unusual methods during which Babel and the query of linguistic multiplicity have been learn by Jewish and Christian exegetes make a easy studying of “unhealthy” range returning to “good” unity problematic. There are a number of moments throughout the historical past of Jewish and Christian exegesis which permit us to formulate a extra fascinating and metaphysically capacious account of what the which means and thriller of Pentecost may be.
If our readings of Babel and Pentecost are insufficiently delicate, we threat enshrining a simplistic and hierarchical understanding of unity over range which impacts our theological metaphysics and political theology. Taking our exegetical cues from Hellenistic and rabbinic Judaism in addition to from Christian patristic materials, we will transformatively reread the narratives of Genesis 11 and Acts 2. This investigation of Babel and Pentecost will uncover the distinctive addition that the Holy Spirit makes for our understanding of Christian metaphysics.
The narrative of the tower of Babel marks a transition in fashion throughout the e-book of Genesis. It’s the final of the overtly mythopoetic episodes (etiological tales with a common scope) and is adopted by a family tree of Shem main into the patriarchal narratives. Our earliest exegetical remedies of this story come from the Hellenistic Jewish milieu of Alexandria. Late vintage Jewish exegetes in Alexandria utilized text-critical methods to the Babel narrative in methods which surprisingly anticipated trendy biblical criticism.[1] We learn about these daring and inventive students as a result of the Jewish exegete and theologian Philo expresses annoyance along with his comparativist colleagues in his personal therapy titled On the Confusion of Tongues. These nameless colleagues cited traces from Homer’s Odyssey in regards to the gigantic Aloeidae piling Mt. Ossa and Mt. Pelion on Mt. Olympus so as to wage warfare in opposition to the gods.[2] On this means, the Jewish Alexandrian scholiasts positioned the Torah in a bigger context and helped make it appear much less alien to their Hellenic compatriots.
Not solely did the Jewish scholiasts examine the Torah with fantasy and fable, however in addition they assumed its textual historical past was sure up in such “alien” sources. A second parallel superior by the Jewish scholiasts involved an Aesopian fable of the primordial unity and subsequent division of animal languages. This fable is just identified to us by way of the Alexandrian author Callimachus. As Philo relays the story, the animals as soon as lived in concord and linguistic unity with one another. As all their wants have been met, their wishes grew till they foolishly despatched an embassy (presumably to the gods) to inquire about the opportunity of immortality. Curiously, a part of their argument is that the snake already enjoys immortality (probably by the shedding of its pores and skin). The animal embassy is rebuffed, and the animal neighborhood is scattered and break up into separate dialects.[3]
The intertestamental Jewish work Jubilees (2nd century BCE) appears to current a mixture of the biblical textual content and this fable. The animals all spoke one language (presumably Hebrew) within the backyard of Eden till the autumn of Adam. They have been subsequently divided into separate speech and “all scattered into the place that was created for them.”[4] The Alexandrian scholiasts instructed that Moses transferred the Aesopian story to males as an alternative of animals to make it extra believable. Not solely did they assume that Moses was repurposing preexisting pagan materials, they additional criticized the ethical import of the Babel story of the Mosaic redaction. Why would God destroy such an necessary human good, mutual understanding, in a misguided effort to cease depraved habits by confusion? Absolutely sin continues apace and there may be nothing extra fascinating for peace than studying the language of one other tradition: “Why then did He take away the neighborhood of language from males as if this was the reason for evil, whereas it ought to rightly be established as one thing most helpful?”[5]
These objections from the late vintage scholiasts mustn’t appear unreasonable. Does it not appear unusual that one thing so fantastic as the variety of languages and dialects amongst peoples must be attributed to a punishment? Wouldn’t it actually have been higher if all tribes and nations had spoken some authentic language, a primordial Esperanto? Many Jewish and Christian theologians have theorized that there was such a language, the same old candidate being Hebrew, all others being degradations or low-cost imitations of the unique sacred tongue. The drive and holy energy of the unique linguistic stream grew to become slowly (or based on Genesis 11, instantly) diluted in time. In our vital and post-critical age, one thing about this appears alien to our expertise of language. One other language is just not one other set of referents for a similar issues I do know, it’s a completely new world that I may be capable to uncover. Can we consign this expertise of superbly unusual new worlds to a postlapsarian horizon?
There are, nonetheless, different paths out there within the exegetical custom. Alcuin of York, by way of the medieval glossa ordinaria on Genesis, makes the puzzling assertion that within the confounding of the languages “God created nothing new.”[6] By this Alcuin appears to imply that the identical phonemes and syllables are recombined and reconstituted throughout the multiplicity of languages. Even the identical groupings of sounds might have completely different meanings in numerous languages. The “confounding” then is an actualization of what was doubtlessly contained within the nature of language itself. This reflection is paying homage to the parable of Thoth in Plato’s dialogue Philebus illustrating the connection between the one and the numerous (to not be confused with Plato’s deployment of the parable of Thoth within the Phaedrus). Thoth, some god or godlike man, realized that sound was infinite or limitless and should be mixed with limiting components like vowels and consonants so as to be made intelligible. By dividing sound right into a restricted group of letters, he was in a position to create and title an instrument of infinity: the alphabet. Even additional, when studying the artwork of studying and writing, one doesn’t actually know the best way to talk till the a number of letters and sounds are identified not simply individually, however in relation to one another. Letters are the numerous (consonants and vowels) beneath the facet of unity (which means) with out ceasing to be particular person sounds, phonemes, syllables, and many others.[7] Why would the confusion of Babel not be a theological good, then? It might appear to broaden the play of unity and multiplicity already inherent within the alphabet of a single language. The miracle of translation, whereby faithfulness to the unique is married to a brand new horizon of linguistic which means, is an act so profound and so intimately associated to the historical past of Jewish and Christian faith that it calls for an evidence past Babel.
Even Jewish rabbis dedicated to the profound significance of the Hebrew language composed eloquent readings on the products of translation. The magisterial composition of rabbinic exegesis on Genesis, Bereshit Rabbah, was compiled centuries after the existence of the Torah in Greek translations. The Palestinian rabbis weren’t unaware of this reality and included a poignant reflection on this historic relationship inside their exegetical labors. Commenting on the verse “Might God enlarge Japeth and let him dwell within the tents of Shem” (Gen 9:27a), the rabbis provide a number of readings, together with: “Bar Kappara defined it: Let the phrases of the Torah be uttered within the language of Japheth [i.e. Greek] within the tents of Shem. R. Judan mentioned: From this we study {that a} translation is permitted [i.e. the Septuagint].”[8] The rabbis even replicate on what modified within the translation of the Torah from Hebrew to Greek through the account of Babel. Genesis 11 is among the passages the place God is recorded talking reflexively within the plural. Come, allow us to go down. The Septuagint (right here and in Genesis 1:26) adjustments this right into a singular kind so as to keep away from theological misunderstanding, and the rabbis don’t have any condemnation for this variation. The lament of Psalm 137—“How lets sing the songs of the Lord in a overseas land?”—and the prophetic warning that the Jewish individuals will hear unusual languages in exile have been modulated into one other key. The curse of Deuteronomy 28:49 that the individuals of God might be dragged into captivity and compelled to listen to an alien language has been transfigured. The Jewish communities in exile discovered the languages and cultural types of their captors which in flip allowed a brand new flowering of theological understanding. The songs of the Lord have been sung in a overseas land and the unfamiliar tongues grew to become a brand new reward and mode of expression for these in exile.
The identical could possibly be mentioned for these Jewish communities who weren’t violently taken captive but nonetheless lived exterior of Judea. By the tip of the primary century BCE, virtually each area of the Mediterranean world was suffused with Jewish communities talking each conceivable dialect. The existence of the Septuagint and the Aramaic translations/paraphrases of the Torah generally known as the Targumim present proof that for many Jewish individuals, there was no common or strict prohibition on multiplying the languages during which the phrase of God must be spoken and studied. The plurality of linguistic and cultural types during which Judaism was practiced fostered a dynamic mental and theologically inventive setting inside and with out Judea, even to the purpose the place Jewish proselytism of Gentiles was so frequent and profitable that Roman poets started complaining about it. The annual apply undertaken by some Jewish communities of returning to Jerusalem for main pilgrimage feasts (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot) solely elevated this cross-pollination. Babel, it appears, was on the verge of being undone.
One in every of these pilgrimage feasts, Shavuot or Pentecost (as translated within the Septuagint), at all times passed off fifty days after Passover. Shavuot was a celebration of the wheat harvest, the primary fruits, and in its numerological significance (per week of weeks plus one) it functioned as a miniature 12 months of Jubilee. Inside the Jewish liturgical calendar, Shavuot grew to become a remembrance of earlier Jubilees and a foretaste of Jubilees to come back. Later rabbinic custom would determine Shavuot because the day on which God gave Israel the regulation, making it additionally a sort of marriage covenant. Maybe this affiliation with marriage is why the e-book of Ruth got here to be the liturgical studying for this feast in rabbinic Judaism.[9] The narrative of Ruth is itself a mysterious signal of the undoing of Babel. Ruth is a Gentile from Moab, a kingdom usually in battle with Israel within the biblical histories, but she is introduced as an clever and virtuous lady. Not solely does she marry Boaz, an act seemingly opposite to the prohibitions of Deuteronomy 23, however she is well known because the supply of the long run Davidic kingship! If the Gentiles are grafted into the lineage of the Davidic kingship, is it potential to keep up a strict division between peoples?
Acts 2, in its presentation of the primary Shavuot after the dying, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, carries with it this tangled custom of exegetical, metaphysical, and political questions. The narrative emphasizes that it’s religious Jews, together with Gentile proselytes, of each nation who’ve gathered in Jerusalem on this event. The listing of those areas can look like a tedious addendum however within the context of wrestling with the story of Babel and several other historic exiles of the Jewish individuals, every title, from Parthia to Rome, is like an incantation summoning forth a brand new sort of universality and a brand new sort of particularity. The inclusion of Judea on the listing is a stark realization that the Jewish individuals and even the Hebrew language is additionally a sort of fractured particularity born from the confounding of languages. There was no group and no dialect unaffected within the account of Genesis 11, no cultivated protect of unity secure from multiplicity; all current peoples and languages require a brand new sort of unity, with out exception.
The miracle of talking in tongues at Pentecost additional demonstrates this lesson. Every individual hears the apostles talking in his or her personal dialect. It isn’t a brand new imperial unity of Greek or Latin or another single language. It’s the gathering of all languages and all peoples into the dashing wind and hearth of the Holy Spirit whereby the true universality will be discovered. The tongues of flame descend multiply so as to reside above every individual. Even these a number of tongues are themselves additional modified as being διαμεριζόμεναι, diversifying, cloven, break up! The holy hearth appears virtually unable to cease itself from in search of extra range. The apostolic kingdom bursts forth as a multiplicity with out subordination, an order and taxis of complete equality, a seemingly infinite distinction which is coextensive with intelligibility and concord.
Pentecost is the general public debut of the Holy Spirit, bringing with it the primary fruits of a nuptial apocalypse, a theological metaphysics and political theology, an virtually unimaginable translation of the equality of the Trinitarian individuals into human communities. Christ commanded us to be one as He’s one with the Father, and with out erasing this, the Spirit teaches us to be completely different as every chic and unfathomable individual of the Godhead is completely different. It’s higher for you that I am going, says Christ in John 16:7, so that he might ship the Spirit. And in sending the Spirit, we might also know Christ extra absolutely. The outline of this primary Jewish-Gentile neighborhood of the Holy Spirit as dwelling collectively and having all possessions in frequent in a while in the identical chapter is just not unintentionally associated to this second within the divine economic system. It’s the coherent political-ecclesial expression of the thriller displayed in and thru the apostles at Pentecost. The apostle Peter bears witness that this new apostolic-egalitarian politeia is distinctly a outcome and duty of the Holy Spirit when he confronts Ananias in Acts 5:3. In mendacity about his donation, Ananias lied to not males however to the Holy Spirit. Ananias wished to ape and imitate the neighborhood of the Spirit with out ecstatically emptying himself into it.
In renewing the pre-propertied communal lifetime of the primary mother and father in Genesis (or varied Greco-Roman myths of the Golden Age), the political theology of Pentecost brings again a wholesome nostalgia for Eden. On the identical time, it’s clearly an eschatological imaginative and prescient stretching towards the reconciliation of all issues as they’ve grown and diversified in historical past. St. Gregory of Nazianzen helps us to theorize how Pentecost will be each the start of historical past and the tip past historical past in certainly one of his sermons on Pentecost:
Hebdomads of days give delivery to Pentecost, a day referred to as holy amongst them; and people of years to what they name the Jubilee, which additionally has a launch of land, and a manumission of slaves, and a launch of possessions purchased. For this nation consecrates to God, not solely the firstfruits of offspring, or of firstborn, but additionally these of days and years. Thus the veneration paid to the quantity Seven gave rise additionally to the veneration of Pentecost. For seven being multiplied by seven generates fifty all however sooner or later, which we borrow from the world to come back, without delay the Eighth and the primary, or slightly one and indestructible.
The eighth day of Creation, which can also be the primary day of the brand new creation, is what is important to convey the times after Passover to completion. It’s the sooner or later added to the forty-nine (7×7). And just like the unity which Pentecost brings, it isn’t merely one other unit, it isn’t simply one other one. As Erik Peterson so superbly argued, the transcendent unity past monarchy, past subordination, past a crude mono-theism, is exactly what prevents us from having a tyrannical political theology. Going past Peterson, we should argue {that a} political theology is feasible, however it should continually conform to the thriller of Trinitarian equality in motion manifested within the thriller of Pentecost. The mysteries of God are additionally theophanies of God speaking an eschato-logic to be understood and imitated. No department of understanding and exercise can excuse itself from the summons of thriller, not metaphysics and definitely not politics. A failure to talk and enact this Pentecostal logic leaves a vacuum which is able to at all times be stuffed by tyrannizing and inherently subordinationist political theologies.
The perception that divine transcendence means extra and never lower than apophatic silence is why Nicholas of Cusa, the good Renaissance cardinal, insisted that one of many highest and most transcendent names for God was non aliud: not-other. Once more, it’s why, inside a complicated erotic metaphysical construction of all issues processing and returning to God (exitus–reditus), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite emphasizes that God goes ecstatically exterior Godself so as to preserve the remaining of every creature in its individuality, unto the uttermost:
For every little thing likes to be at peace with itself, to be at one, and by no means to maneuver or fall away from its personal existence and from what it has. And ideal peace is there as a present, guarding with out confusion the individuality of every, providentially guaranteeing that every one issues are quiet and freed from confusion inside themselves and from with out, that every one issues are unshakably what they’re and that they’ve peace and relaxation.[10]
Apophasis and silence are essential, however they’re finally ordered towards a brand new kataphasis—liturgical manifestations, ecclesial revelations, the physique of Christ on the earth, the brand new creation coming into its liberation.
The place does this go away our readings of Babel now? In Acts 17:26-28, Paul offers a speech to the Athenians the place he narrates the story of Babel in a post-Pentecostal horizon:
And he made out of one each nation of males to dwell on all of the face of the earth, having decided allotted durations and the boundaries of their habitation, that they need to search God, within the hope that they could really feel after him and discover him. But he isn’t removed from every certainly one of us, for “in him we dwell and transfer and have our being,” as even a few of your poets have mentioned, “For we’re certainly his offspring.”
God made all nations from one, diversifying their existence chronologically and geographically as a way for them of extra simply discovering God! It’s this confidence which Paul has within the significance of the unity and variety of human cultural-linguistic historical past that enables him to then cite theological truths from Greek poets: In him we dwell and transfer and have our being. The range was not the punishment; it was, and stays, the drugs.
And lest we’re tempted to relaxation in a straightforward and summary universality, it is very important do not forget that the whole lot of the New Testomony was written earlier than any clear parting of the methods between Judaism and Christianity. Inside the cosmopolitan late vintage world, even the various modes of rabbinic and patristic exegesis have been being shaped in the identical locations and even reciprocally influencing one another.[11] No matter thriller of unity-diversity is being politically and ecclesially revealed by Pentecost is neither Jew nor Gentile, not a easy enlargement of a parochial national-ethnic faith right into a safely universal-ethical one. The irrefragable particulars of salvation historical past stay: Pentecost occurs in Jerusalem, and Paul warns us that it’s we who’ve been grafted into the neighborhood of Israel, not the opposite means round. All are humbled so that every one could also be exalted.
The final aspect of Pentecost to contemplate in relation to Babel is the descent of fireplace itself. If, in Genesis, the sin of Babel is an try to achieve and rival God, the descent of flames at Pentecost could possibly be seen as a easy reversal. It’s unhealthy to achieve and it’s good to obtain. Within the liturgical poetry of St. Ephrem the Syrian, we encounter a fruitful complication of this dynamic. Within the underworld, personified Demise encounters Christ within the midst of harrowing his kingdom and cries out:
I’ll hurry to close/the gates of Sheol
In entrance of the Useless One/whose dying has plundered me.
Whosoever hears of it should surprise at my humiliation,
That I used to be conquered by a Useless One from exterior./All of the useless wish to exit,
However solely this One pushed in./The Drugs of Life has entered Sheol
And restored its useless to life.
Who was it who introduced me/surreptitiously the Residing Hearth
By which the chilly and darkish womb of Sheol was warmed?[12]
Demise is frightened by Christ who has, just like the philanthropic Prometheus, secretly introduced the divine hearth so as to save humanity. He was lifted up on the cross so as to descend into the underworld.
In an identical means, Christ’s ascension was for the sake of the descent of the Holy Spirit. We should always observe St. Ephrem’s instance and see this as one other picture of the Promethean reward of flame. Christ has left us so as to ascend to the Father and, theopoetically talking, to steal the divine hearth from the place it’s sequestered in heaven. The descent of tongues of flames at Pentecost is the work of the Spirit and likewise the motion and reward of Christ-Prometheus. It’s he who sends and is by no means occluded by the Spirit. We shouldn’t be stunned then, that the Paschal Candle, which symbolizes Christ, is hymned in exactly these phrases of infinite range and transcendent unity that characterizes the Pentecostal flames. Within the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil we discover the next traces:
However now we all know the praises of this pillar,
which glowing hearth ignites for God’s honor,
a hearth into many flames divided,
but by no means dimmed by sharing of its mild,
for it’s fed by melting wax,
drawn out by mom bees
to construct a torch so treasured.
We should search the non-public face of the Holy Spirit within the diversification of flames, the glossolalia of translation and interpretation, and within the paradoxical construction of the ecclesia-polis which maintains its unity by emptying itself and achieves its universality by in search of the margins. On the subject of language and reasoning, Pentecost additional grounds a range of genres as actually theological. Knowledge herself speaks with a heteroglossia and hybridity of types. The lyric, epic, narrative, logical, exegetical, dialectical, symbolic, and dialogical modes of investigation should all be contained inside theology. Every style is one other tongue of flame, and if any certainly one of them have been to be separated, the entire can be diminished. “The letter kills however the Spirit offers life” (2 Cor 3:6).
Looking for the face of the Holy Spirit means in search of the wholeness which moms and nurtures fertile multiplicity. If we will say that there’s a picture of the non-public face of the Spirit given to us by Sacred Scripture, it should be the descending Heavenly Jerusalem from the e-book of Revelation: all of creation turn out to be the ecclesia and the entire ecclesia turn out to be the Bride of the Lamb. Maybe then even the neighborhood of animals scattered in Aesop and Jubilees might be made intelligible to us and one another. As Romans 8 tells us, all creation is groaning for liberation by the glorified youngsters of God. What the Spirit has at all times been and is now we’ll see when the complete redemption of range reaches eschatological achievement. In that energy and with that hope, we should pressure each nerve to enact the theological metaphysics and political theology of the thriller of Pentecost.
[1] The unimaginable story of how strategies of Homeric exegesis grew to become utilized to the Torah by Jewish students will be learn in Maren Niehoff’s Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (2011).
[3] Philo, Confusion of Tongues, 7-9.
[4] Outdated Testomony Pseudepigrapha, edited by James Charlesworth, 60.
[6] Biblia cum Glossa Ordinaria: Genesis, annotated and translated by Samuel J Klumpenhouwer, 99.
[7] Plato, Philebus, 18b-d.
[8] Genesis Rabbah, 36.8.
[9] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Soferim, 14.
[10] Ps. Dionysius, Divine Names, Chapter 11.
[11] See Maren Niehoff’s chapter “Origen’s Commentary on Genesis as a key to Genesis Rabbah” in Genesis Rabbah in Textual content and Context (2018) for an astounding evaluation of Origen and the rabbinic exegetes in Caesarea.
[12] Ephrem the Syrian, Nisibene Hymn 36.
