James “the Rat” Kushman
Jesus and Unicorns—Not As Odd As You Might Think
Fall 2010
Biblical Foundations of Literature
LIT 240
Mythologies
LIT 285D
12/1/10
“It is, of course, true that this instrument of the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility, which has stood the test of a thousand years, may be turned into a double-edged weapon, so that it may lead some man not to humility and complete self-mastery, but, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride, that is to say, to slavery and not to freedom” (Dostoyevsky 29).
“Ophion and Eurynome ruled over Olympus till they were dethroned by Saturn and Rhea. Milton alludes to them in “Paradise Lost.” He says the heathens seem to have had some knowledge of the temptation and fall of man.
“And fabled how the serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurynome, (the wide—
Encrouaching Eve perhaps,) had first the rule
Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven” (Bulfinch 5).
Jesus and Unicorns—Not As Odd As You Might Think
Unicorns in our age are defined as creatures formed with the body of a horse and a giant horn coming out of their head. While this imagining is entertaining, the question arises why have we never seen a Unicorn? A certain belief has arisen that the Unicorn is in fact the Rhinoceros, yet how he arrived in Canaan is still a question that has yet to be answered. Others, such as Christian denominations, will tell you that it is a type of wild ox and yet I have never seen this singular horned wild ox and have yet to find any sufficient evidence of it existing anywhere. The problem still exists that the Unicorn sprouts up in the Bible and according to the decree of the Catholic Church the Bible is inerrant. It seems we have two choices: believe that Unicorns exist, that in fact the bible is inerrant and that we indeed see through a glass so darkly that we can’t even perceive the difference between horses and unicorns; or the second, that unicorns do not exist, and in effect the inerrancy of the Bible is false. I propose a third solution: that Unicorns do and do not exist, that is, they do not exist descriptively, but metaphorically.
Metamorphosis in the Bible
The Biblical Unicorn does not represent the picturesque horse and horn but symbolizes the human being that has ascended, or is in a connection with God. The reason behind the use of the metaphor falls on the fact that it refers to a metamorphoses of the human being into one that sees with “one eye” through connection with God. This metamorphoses in the Old Testament is formed by a sacrifice to God, whereby, if the person has been cleansed into righteousness, enters a covenant, or connection with God. In the New Testament Jesus Christ takes on both the sacrifice and the connection in his death and offers to us this seat of connection, this oneness of sight with God, through a marriage with himself.
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].”- Isaiah 45:7
“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”-John 8:12
“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”- 2 Corinthians 11:2
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?”-Matthew 6:22-3
The Christian faith is founded on the belief that Jesus of Nazerath was the Messiah (or Christ) the Old Testament prophesied, and that through his new covenant, the marriage of ourselves to him, we are filled with the light of life. Matthew places great emphasis on the fact that the light is through a singularity of sight that leaves the anti-statement that darkness is to be seen through various sights, or two eyes, or through a duality. Thus the duality of the world is ascended through a union with Christ.
Through the repetitive parallelism of the Bible we see that light is likened to Christ, unity, and peace, while darkness is likened to antichrist (that is, without Christ, and not a singular entity manifested as the opposite of Jesus as common knowledge holds), duality, and evil. While Christians are famous for citing the turn the other cheek parable, The Book of Revelation, with its “double-edged sword” tends to give off the misguided idea that this is not a religion of peace. Yet, with a little more insight into the passages we can understand the “double-edged sword” not as its usual description, but as a metaphor, a symbol of God.
“And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance [was] as the sun shineth in his strength.”-Revelation 1:16
“And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;”- Revelation 2:12
“For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”- Hebrews 4:12
“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God”- Revelations 19:15
“And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me”-Isaiah 49:2
The Double-edged Sword
The Double-edged sword is actually a metaphor for the Hebrew letter Yod. Of the twenty-two Biblical Hebrew letters, Yod is the tenth (and can also be stretched in such a way as to be a part of every Biblical Hebrew letter). Its very shape is that of a double-edged sword ("cornishevangilist’s weblog”). It also happens to be the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, other known as the unspeakable name of God, YHVH (הוהי) . YHVH is translated into the King James Bible as “I AM THAT I AM”. Based on the conception that “I think therefore I am” which states that the state of consciousness is being, “I AM THAT I AM” is a pure consciousness, or one that is without the iniquities of forgetting. “I AM THAT I AM” has always been.
Yod can be understood as the beginning consciousness of God. In the letter to Hebrews Paul explains that the word of God (Yod), is sharper than any two-edged sword directly refuting the Primacy of the Act to the Primacy of the Word. He explains that the word is power, and not the sword. For instance, the power to understand these passages in the Bible lies not in the physical descriptive sword, but in the metaphor of it being the Word of God. Not in the act, but in the utterance. Revelation sites twice where the “two-edged” sword comes out of the mouth further arguing that it is in fact a metaphor for the word and not the physical description.
Isaiah’s prophecy listed above is even further more proof that the real “action” is the power of the word. With “And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword” we see that the prophet aligns himself with a consciousness of God. I utter Yod. I prophecy through an alignment with the consciousness of God. He goes on to say that “in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me” referring to the Kabalistic mnemonic in which the Hebrew alphabet (and the depth of mysteries they entail) is placed into an artificial memory theater which is the hand. Thus Isaiah is saying that he has been turned into a vessel, a medium, a prophet through which the word of God is being spoken. For further evidence look into Psalms 119, under the tenth verse entitled Yodh (and be sure to enjoy that the Psalm has in fact twenty-two verses named after each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet).
(If you notice YHVH is the root of all of these)
Power of Symbols
The Star of David, made up of two Pythagorean triangles (one facing down, the other up), is also a memory symbol. The image represents on a mystical level patriarchal structure where man is the effeminate, the fallen, the down triangle, and God is the masculine, the ascended man, the up triangle. The mnemonic also holds the entire Biblical Hebrew Alphabet within its structure, something no other alphabet does ("heaven awaits"). From what has been discussed earlier we know that the Power of God is in the word, yet how powerful must that symbol be which holds in it the entirety of God’s alphabet?
“I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, [and] the bright and morning star.”- Revelation 22:6
“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:”- 2 Peter 1:19
And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust.”- Romans 15:12
“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots”-Isaiah 11:1
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”-Isaiah 14:12
“And one of the elders said to me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.”-Revelation 5:5
Once more, we see that the “Power of God” is held within words; though the problem of translation, as in the case of Isaiah’s and Esaias names not matching, has no answer from me, but that we let the quoted text weigh its worth. As for the word Lucifer, which in this day and age has come to represent the devil, I do have a lot to correct. The problem arises with the masterpiece work of John Milton’s Paradise Lost in which Satan and Lucifer are one and the same. While I do believe that Milton is working on an esoteric level that is correct, the misunderstandings that sprout from his work of art lead to a misunderstanding of what is actually being imagined.
Lucifer is actually Latin for “light-bringer” and is translated from the Biblical Hebrew as well as a Greek word with the understanding that they both meant the same thing. This only appears in the Latin Vulgate and not in the English King James Bible. Some Christians, in there unwillingness to deal with certain passages (Ezekiel 28:11-19) that effect their esoteric existence will argue that the Greek word written by Peter had no correlation whatsoever to the Lucifer that Isaiah speaks of. Yet, Isaiah is not speaking of the fall of the Babylon king but is in fact prophesying the life and death of the Christ (Isaiah 14:4-21). The correlation made with Ezekiel 28:11-19 in which both prophets are speaking of the descent of the light is hitting the nail quite on the head. And the connection of “thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire” from Ezekiel 28:14 connecting with this passage from Job is truly beautiful as well:
“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘Whence comest thou?’ Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”-Job 1:6-7
Ezekiel laments of the fall of mankind, and Isaiah the life and death of Christ; both have imagery very similar to each other, which when coupled with the similarities between the paths of man (in Ezekiel) and Satan (in Job) it is not hard to believe that people likened Isaiah’s prophesy to that of one describing the end of the King of Babylon, which it does in the next passages (Isaiah 14:22-27) but again the power is metaphorical and not descriptive of the physical as so many have come to believe. With the fact understood that Lucifer is in fact a reference to Christ, “the root of David” and the “morning star”, we can see that Christ himself is aligned with the same metaphor in which his power comes from Words. He is that from which all God’s words sprout.
Daniel’s Unicorn
The English translation Unicorn stems from the archaic word “Resh-Aleph-Yod-Mem” (Sederholm). Regarding the letter Aleph, Jorge Louis Borges writes in a short story of his
He hesitated, then with that level, impersonal voice we reserve for confiding something intimate, he said that to finish the poem he could not get along without the house because down in the cellar there was an Aleph. He explained that an Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all other points.
"It's in the cellar under the dining room," he went on, so overcome by his worries now that he forgot to be pompous. "It's mine -- mine. I discovered it when I was a child, all by myself. The cellar stairway is so steep that my aunt and uncle forbade my using it, but I'd heard someone say there was a world down there. I found out later they meant an old-fashioned globe of the world, but at the time I thought they were referring to the world itself. One day when no one was home I started down in secret, but I stumbled and fell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph."
"The Aleph?" I repeated.
"Yes, the only place on earth where all places are -- seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending. I kept the discovery to myself and went back every chance I got. As a child, I did not foresee that this privilege was granted me so that later I could write the poem. Zunino and Zungri will not strip me of what's mine -- no, and a thousand times no! Legal code in hand, Doctor Zunni will prove that my Aleph is inalienable."
I tried to reason with him. "But isn't the cellar very dark?" I said.
"Truth cannot penetrate a closed mind. If all places in the universe are in the Aleph, then all stars, all lamps, all sources of light are in it, too."- (Borges)
Borges goes on to explain that the Aleph is a state and not a place (Orsi). It is something of a metamorphosis based upon the metaphorical, not something you see with two eyes, but with one. A singularity in which everything falls apart and then back together again. This couples strongly with the letter Yod which we discussed earlier as a connection with God. The Unicorn would eventually be transcribed down to Resh-Yod-Yem, and eventually to only Re-em where the Poet Wallace Steven perhaps gained his idea in spelling ice cream with a dash in his poem the Emperor of Ice-cream.
The Unicorn is brought up in Isaiah in quite a turbulence of misunderstanding owing to the fact that the unicorn does not seem prevalent throughout the Bible (Knox). Scholars claim that the Unicorn, or re’em (not re-em, mind you) is a type of wild ox. In the Book of Daniel a one horned male goat just happens to crush a two horned ram:
“and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai. Then I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns, and the two horns were high: but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward: so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand, but he did according to his will, and became great. And as I was considering, behold, a he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close unto the ramm, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and broke his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand.”-Daniel
(Notice that east is the only direction without pushing)
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”- Matthew 2:2
“Therefore the he-goat waxed very great, and when he was strong, the great horn was broken: and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.-Daniel 8
Daniel’s prophecy of the end of the old Covenant (2 horned ram, though by far not its only depth) through Christ’s new covenant (notably horned he-goat) and the sprouting of what is considered the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, John is evident in the passages listed above. Christ, as well as his four apostles are described as “notable” or “had a notable horn between his eyes” further illuminating the connection between unicorns and a person who is connected, or ascended to God.
Mythological Parallelism
In this downgraded (which is truly an upgrade from our usual mode of understanding) perspective of the working of words on a metaphorical level, instead of a physically descriptive, we can see direct parallel’s in symbolism in Greek Mythology. Take for instance Ovid’s rendition of Achelous and Hercules in his epic poem of Metamorphoses:
“I’d lost as river-god; I’d lost as snake;
All that was left to try was my third shape;
So I became a savage bull and-changed-
Took up the fight again. Upon my left,
He threw his arms around my neck; and as
I ran full speed, he let himself be dragged;
And finally he forced my hard horns down
Into the ground; and in the swirling dust,
He laid me low. But that was not enough;
For as he clutched one horn-and it was tough-
He wrenched it off-he tore it from my brow;
I bear that mutilation still. The Naiads
Filled up that horn with fruits and fragrant flowers;
They made of it a sacred thing. And now
Abundance-gracious goddess-uses this,
The Cornucopia, as her motif.”
The river-god was done; and now a nymph
Dressed like Diana in a tucked-up tunic,
With long hair flowing over both her shoulders,
Came in, to serve us our dessert: the fruits
Of autumn, the exquisite fruits that we
Admired in the ample horn of plenty.
Firstlight has come; and when the mountain peaks
Are struck by rays of sun, the young men leave;
They do not wait until the stream finds peace,
The calm of an untroubled course: they part
Before the flood has beat its full retreat.
And Achelous sinks his rustic face
And head, which lacks one horn, beneath the waves.- Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Bk. IX, 290-1, (Mandelbaum 290-91)
Achelous, whom has the ability to change between snake, man, and, bull aligns itself with metaphors used in the Bible. When Achelous states “I’d lost as snake” we can see the similarity between Eve (effeminate, and not the physically descriptive man) and the serpent who bids her partake of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent represents a descent, or fall from God, to effeminacy (Eve), or that which is without God. Similarly we see the fall of Achelous saying “I’d lost as river-god” placing himself as one who was above the descent, or fall of man, as Adam and Eve were, to which he metamorphose into his third shape- that of a “savage bull” after the defeat of himself as river-god, as well as snake. Bull’s in Greek mythology (as well as numerous others) and the Bible are constantly symbolized as sacrifices. From what we have delved into earlier we can see that the Bull represents the middle ground between mankind and the highest power. An ascended human, or a unicorn as the bible refers to it, is a person that is in between, in the unity of the sacrifice between mankind and the highest power. In Daniel we see the one horned he-goat that crushes the two horned ram and through this creates a new connection with God. Hercules rips from Achelous a horn which is then held sacred and as a sign of abundance, similarly the notable horn of the he-goat breaks to give birth to the spreading of the gospels, or good news, through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Northrop Frye in his Words With Power says that the teaching of the Bible is to live life more abundantly. The connection between the two is hard fought to disagree upon.
With Ovid’s line “Firstlight has come” we can see the parallelism between Ovid’s light and that of Mathew 6:22 saying “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light”. The only mode of apparent difference is in the biblical “light” and Ovid’s “firstlight.” This is easily overcome with a verse from the apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians:
“I knew a man in Chirst above fourteen years ago, whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth: such a one, caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body, our out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth), how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful a man to utter.”- 2 Corinthians 12:2-4
The Kingdom of Heaven is now, and it is through the ascent to God (through a connection with Christ) that we reach this light, or unicorn status, that is described as being in heaven. Paul shows us that there is multiple understandings, levels, or depths involved in heaven which leaves the statement that there is a firstlight, or first heaven. Ovid continues on using the same imagery of ascension as used variously throughout the Bible saying “and when the mountain peaks are struck by rays of sun” giving off the rudimentary aspect of ascension (via mountain) by light (rays of sun). Continuing on with this metaphor with the philosophical phrase of Heraclitus in mind that “ the road on the way up, and the road on the way down- are the one and the same” we can see Ovid’s depiction of the river as a road of descent or ascension depending upon whether or not it is the those of the “light”, the “singularity”, or that of the “duality”, the broken sight:
“They do not wait until the stream finds peace,
The calm of an untroubled course: they part
Before the flood has beat its full retreat.
And Achelous sinks his rustic face
And head, which lacks one horn, beneath the waves.”
In Conclusion
So does the union exist? Are the words of Ovid’s even translated correctly? Does the tale of Achelous fit into any story? Or was it just a fluke of the Greek mythology? And isn’t the Christian religion one founded on faith and not knowledge? All of these questions and yet so few answers. Someone once said “If I had all the money in the world, I’d study with the Wiseman seven hours a day”. But one thing fun I’ve noticed is that if you take an ear of corn ( a uni-corn as it were), and in stripping it of its skin; if you place the ear upon the backboard and trace it, upon looking at the tracing you see a double-edged sword. Upon further inspection you can actually see a Y and a D on either side of the piece of corn. They say that language is ascertained by children, not learned. It would seem that the Yod, the word of God is also ascertained, unbeknownst to those who seeing, don’t see, and those hearing, that don’t hear. I myself need no proofs–wait–I believe Marcel Proust says it best:
“And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof, but the indisputable evidence, of its felicity, its reality, and in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I rediscover the same state, illuminated by no fresh light. I ask my mind to make one further effort, to bring back once more the fleeting sensation. And so that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention against the sounds from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is tiring itself without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy the distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before making a final effort. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it; I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed” (Proust 49)
Bibliography
Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch's Mythology. 1st ed. Crawforsville, IN: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1968. Print.
"HEBREW LETTER YOD." CORNISHEVANGILIST'S WEBBLOG. wordpress.com, 07-09-2009. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://cornishevangelist.wordpress.com/hebrew-letter-yod/>.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. 14th. 1 vols. Great Britian: Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, 1958. Print.
"Hebrew and the Star of David." heaven awaits. wordpress.com, Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/hebrew-and-the-star-of-david/>.
Knox, Sarah. "The Slave and The Bible and, of course, Unicorns." Sarah Knox Bible as Literature. Blogger, 11 16 2010. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://sarah-knox.blogspot.com/2010/11/slave-and-bible.html>.
Leitch, Aaron. "Introduction to the Hebrew Alphabet." Aaron Lietch Homepage. Tripod, 07/2002. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://kheph777.tripod.com/art_alephbeth.html>.
Mandelbaum, Allen. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. 1st ed. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993. 290-91. Print.
Orsi, Jon. "Jon Orsi- On Books." Jon Orsi's Mythology Blog. Blogger, 11/15/2010. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://4allthingschange.blogspot.com/2010/11/jon-orsi-on-books.html>.
Sederholm, Val. "The Prophet and the Unicorn." I began to reflect. Blogger, 07/17/2010. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://valsederholm.blogspot.com/2010/07/prophet-and-unicorn.html>.
Author’s Note:
The inspiration I received in writing this essay lies its biggest thanks to the introduction in the New Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet entitled “Imagining Hamlet” written by the Editor Robert S. Moila. The two distinguished passages that rose from the page and aroused the passion that brings forth this short paper both deal with the problem of placing the biblical and classical elements arising in Hamlet, albeit life, into a single context.
“Such Christian imperatives everywhere complicate and contest the demands of classical revenge tragedy in Hamlet, generating its conflicted style, enduring ironies, and critical imaginings.”-xiv
This passage in turn leads to Moila’s declaration that
“Hamlet attempts to justify revenge in Christian terms, to argue that it is “perfect conscience” to kill Claudius and that he will be damned if he doesn’t rather than if he does. Horatio provides no reassuring answer. Two incompatible ethical systems, classical and Christian, here clash impossibly.”-xvii
While this essay has nothing to do with Hamlet, it does have to do with not making, but showing the connection that exists between the Bible and Greek Mythology.
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