The Great Commandment

The great Rabbi, Hillel, who lived around the same time as Jesus of Nazareth was (as legend goes at any rate) once asked by a Roman Centurion to sum up the Torah in one sentence. He replied: "That which you hate, do not do to another, the rest is commentary."

Those are words I think we can all live by. Jesus of Nazareth also (reportedly) said a similar thing, known as the Golden Rule: "do unto others, as you would have them do unto you." The Buddha - Sidartha - also had similar teachings.

Along these lines, I thought I would "analyze" another quotation from Jesus of Nazareth. He was asked, so the stories go, what is the most important commandment. Now, in his times, there were lots of commandments, the famed "Ten Commandments" courtesy of Charleton Heston :-) which were sort of the "ethical" guidelines such as do not murder and do not covet (the latter being one which we in America seem to always forget, in the age of consumerism, always coveting the latest iPhone, etc., but I'll let that one go for now), and, also more "ceremonial" laws contingent upon their times. Laws of the latter sort were not universal laws, but just cultural things that cropped up for one reason or another - don't eat shellfish, don't mix fabrics, men grow out your beards, etc., etc. (It is, if one will forgive an aside, sadly amusing about how one such ceremonial law, against "sodomy" comes to be so thrown about today - the very word a mischaracterizing of why Sodom was judged - another post, that, but suffice it say it had not the least bit to do with certain types of closed-door activities and everything to do with middle eastern morals of hospitality at the time - i.e., treating one's guests well was a prime principle at the time for reasons left to another day, Sodom violated that by not treating Lot's guests, the angels, with respect, and were duly judged - it hadn't a thing to do with "sodomy" and everything to do with respecting those whom one has under one's roof. The ceremonial law against "sodomy" was in fact a cultural "more" of the time, to do most likely with distancing the Jewish faith from its biggest rival at the time, the religion of Baal Saphon, Lord of Earth - and storms under some renditions - whose temples employed male prostitutes, so, the ceremonial anti-sodomy law was in fact a "distancing" from other rival religions, like many of the others were, so it is really sadly amusing about how some folks try to use the anti-"sodomy" edict to bash the LGBT community, when it was never a "moral", or universal, law to begin with, but only a culturally, time and place contingent thing, and in fact in the Torah is no where near the ten commandments, but is in the section where they are talking about not eating bacon - an aside, but worth the remark, methinks.) In any event, people asked Jesus of Nazareth what the "greatest commandment" was, the one commandment that was more important than anything else, more universal than culturally contingent ceremonial laws and even more universal than the ethical laws, which perhaps "feed into" but do not encompass, such a "great commandment". His reply was, roughly, in the King James version I think (my memory is rusty): The two great commandments are - love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and the second is like unto it, love thy neighbor as thyself.

OK, love God, and love one's neighbor. Got it. But let's have a look at that more deeply. Unfortunately I am not a Greek scholar so don't know the original text, but, also, on the other hand, we can look at great texts, like the Gospels or Shakespeare as art, which can invite differing interperations. So what follows is one person's (my own) interpretation and is not meant to be some "scholarly" sort of analysis. Jesus of Nazareth gives two supreme edicts, meant to over rule any lesser edict (e.g. stuff about eating bacon, or "sodomy", for that matter). He says, love God with all one's worth, essentially, and then immediately goes on to say, love thy neighbor as thyself. Now, the King James is a notoriously incorrect translation of the original language, however beautiful it is - I am with "the Hitch" (Christopher Hitchens) on this one as he has remarked how powerful and moving the King James Bible is, agree or disagree with certain religious stuff. It is well known that King James was a paranoic person (Britain's equivalent to Richard Nixon, if one wills), not to mention a "closet case" which no doubt fueled his paranoia. He was convinced that "witches" or pagan practitioners in England were "out to get him", so he often randomly inserted the word "witch" into the King James Bible translation - e.g. if the text says "thieves are bad", he would rework it to say "witches are bad", etc., an unfortunate tradition that has been carried out elsewhere - for instance in the Epistle of I Timothy, there is something about "neither prostitutes nor those who go to prostitutes, nor homosexuals will inherit the Kingdom of God" or something to that effect - of course, the original Greek word that was translated as "homosexual" was, roughly "pimp", and that makes sense in the context - he was railing about prostitution, so it makes sense that he says prostitutes, and their clients and their pimps are "bad news", but it makes no sense to just throw in randomly, and "oh by the way homosexuals are bad as well". This Greek mistranslation was done intentionally in the Wycliff Bible in the 1500's, by someone with an axe to grind (or, perhaps, a closet to maintain, ha). So King James is not alone in editing text for his own political advantage. All that to say, I do not pretend the King James Bible is a good translation, rather, with the Hitch, I think it is a great work of artistic language in any event, a beauty lost in subsequent translations. (As an aside, if you want an accurate translation, the Newly Revised Standard Version - NSRV - the one used in the Episcopal Church is the one updated with the latest scholarship, so personally that is the only one I read if I am wanting an actual, correct translation, even if the NSRV itself is imperfect, it still bests its competitors, but just in terms of poetry the King James has something to be said for it.)

Those "asides", aside, in the King James, Jesus of Nazareth says his second command is "like unto it", like the first commandment, in the NSRV it says "like it" but, well, "same difference" there, as they say. The thought recently occured to me that there is a "deeper message" one could find here. He is asked, what is the greatest commandment, and he replies, love God, etc., and without prompting offers a second commandment. They asked him for one commandment. He gave two. Interesting. He might have said: "Love God, with all your soul, etc." and have been done with it, but, rather, he said, love God and oh by the way here is a similar edict, love your neighbor as yourself. Why would the text read this way, I wonder. The question arises as to why Jesus of Nazareth would give another "layering" if one wills, to a question of what is the greatest commandment.

Now, we all know Jesus of Nazareth liked to speak in parables (and was probably only exceeded in his ability to do so, in my opinion, by two people, Aesop of Aseop's Fables, and much later on, by the contemporary philosopher Peter Rollins, but I'll let that one be for now). So, he was sort of "clever" so to speak in his replies to "gotcha questions" to channel Governor Palin. Jesus of Nazareth always seemed to speak in riddles, if one wills. The greatest theologian of the 20th century, Paul Tillich, wrote (somewhere - it might have been "The New Being" but not quite sure) about the tale of someone crippled whom Jesus healed, but before he healed the cripple, he said, "your sins are forgiven". Tillich remarked about how, really, Jesus had presaged Freud and other great thinkers with similar insights, with the basic concept of how psychosomatic illnesses are often the worst of all, that is, the person who was crippled had a worse problem of feeling guilty about whatever it was, i.e., this person had psychological problems, and Jesus in this tale was prescient enough to understand that it is often more important to heal the psychological pain of a person, than to heal the physical pain, especially since the latter often follows the former. So this healing of a cripple story was far from a "magic trick" story, it was rather an important point being made, that our psychological anguish, guilt, etc., is often more "crippling" than anything physical. Tillich's analysis of this I think is among the better examples of scholarship in recent memory. I mention this to make the point that often there is "subtext" in the given texts about Jesus of Nazareth, and one has to "read between the lines" to draw artistic or ethical inferences therefrom.

So, to come back to the issue at hand: when Jesus of Nazareth was asked what was the "Great Commandment", he characteristically gave a somewhat "cryptic" answer: the first commandment is to love God, and second is like it, love your neighbor (or compatriot, etc.) as yourself. Well, I think one could well interpret this to mean this: love God, or, in other words, love your neighbor. I think the bottom line here is not first love God and then if you get around to it, love your neighbor. I think it is rather saying that "loving God" amounts to loving one's neighbor. That the second is "like unto" the first means, for me, saying the same thing. He is not saying, love God, and also love your neighbor, rather, for me, he is saying, to the extent which we love our neighbor we "love God" or "fulfill the greatest commandment."

The contemporary Irish philosopher (or theologian) Peter Rollins has some interesting discussions about how it is "impossible to love God". I will link to a Valentine's Day blog post Rollins did, http://peterrollins.net/?p=2127 on the related point about how one cannot "love" Love, for love is not an object but is an activity, it "emerges", so to speak, and is not ironically an object of love or worship, but is something that emerges in ACTION. To further back up this notion, I will link one other thing from Rollins, http://peterrollins.net/?p=2340 where he compares "God" to the dog on the 80's Canadian television programmme, "The Littlest Hobo", about a dog who comes into a situation of conflict or problems, manages to fix things, and then goes along his merry way, without ever settling down with any of the folks he helps. (Incidentally as a big Megan Follows fan I would recommend one to search on youtube for that show, since she is in one of the episodes. :-) ) I am brushing up against a lot of "deep" kinds of stuff, but here I want to just put forward a simple idea: the "Great Commandment" from Jesus of Nazareth I think is to love one's fellows, period, and love them as one loves oneself. There is no "space" or "gap" between the terms "love God" and "love one's neighbors". It is the same thing. Rollins goes into that better than I could, but essentially the idea is that whatever the word "God" means to somebody (Creator, Supreme Being, etc., etc., or just a complete fabrication or delusion) there is in fact one way to understand this which everyone can relate to. That "God" IS Love. And for Rollins, that is why he is on about one cannot "love God" because one cannot "love Love", one can only love. And that's it. There is nothing more to be said.

The Great Commandment is to love one's fellows, or, going back to Hillel, visiting upon one's fellows only that which one would want to be visited upon oneself, and nothing else. It is really just that simple, the notion of treating the problems of one's friends as one's own, and so forth, but it does take a lifetime sometimes to figure that out. :-) To the extent that we love others as ourselves, we fulfill the Great Commandment, to the extent that we do not, we do not, and that is as simple as that. T.S. Eliot might say here in conclusion, "Shantih" - I'll go with the equivalent terminology of some of my Wiccan friends and say, "Blessed Be." :-)

(Picture is of Charleton Heston as Moses and Anne Baxter as the Egyptian princess Neferteri in Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments, appropriate I thought for a blog post about "The Great Commandment". :-) )