“What is your reading of it?” (Luke 10:26, NKJV)
In the previous teaching we got a much better understanding of the nature of the cherubs. In the last paragraph of that teaching we quoted 1Cor. 2:7, which speaks about “the wisdom of God”, or then, of the Christ (1Cor. 1:24), or the cherubs, who exist “in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory”. We then noted that this shibboleth will unfold in the next teaching.
(It should also be clear to the reader of these teachings that the way in which they unfold is almost an iconic manifestation of this same unfolding process in which the Bride learns to search out their identities. It provides heuristic guidance in the journey of understanding our individual calling, purpose and spiritual identity. The word heuristic means “enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves”.)
Readers will also begin to realise that the unfolding of revelation requires an enlarging or extending of our ability to think about the nature of language and interpretation. We must learn how our dreams, visions, prophesies, personal subconscious, collective unconscious, the mysteries of God’s word (Rom. 11:4), or whatever forms part of God’s interwoven material, guides us to read it as texts. In this way we practically learn that the word text derives from the Latin textere, and that it means to weave. Over time we become familiar with the production of things that are interwoven with one another.
This current teaching thus also illustrates the process of interpretation that we need to learn. You and I are, despite so many aids and support that enable us to read and interpret Scripture, largely “Biblically illiterate,” an apt phrase that the subversive blogger Fred Clark (slacktivist.typepad.com) coined. The main reason for this is that we never learnt that the text we’re looking at is a living text! You cannot catch a portion of Scripture like a butterfly and pin it down on a dissection board and take it apart with heavy theological scalpels, and still expect to come to an understanding of the wonder and beauty of its life. If you think you’ve abstracted its life from the butterfly you’ve alas lost that very essence in the process. You can, at most, integrate yourself into the text, be torn into the veil as it were, with Godly imagination. In this way we will be skilled readers that God can entrust with the process of making meaning, with the deep knowing that, eventually, as Harold Bloom has spelled out: “There are no texts, only interpretations. There are no texts; there are only ourselves.”
If I remember correctly I used this aphorism of Bloom’s thirty years ago, in 1988, as the motto of my D.Litt.-dissertation. Because it was a motto, it wasn’t necessary to include a reference. During the writing of this teaching I started searching for the book in which I had originally found it years ago, and came upon an interview that Imre Salusinszky conducted with Harold Bloom (published in Criticism & Society, pp. 45-73). Here Bloom talks about his text The Anxiety of Influence, and explains that the first manuscript of this text got lost (at a time long before computers), and that he found it years later from an old friend, who he had given it to read after the first draft. The title of that book was The Covering Cherub, or Poetic Influence! Bloom’s most important intervention in the book was that, with the writing of poetry, every true or great poet models himself on an earlier great poet who he, in the tradition of Freud’s Oedipus complex theory, must rid himself of in order to write over him, surpassing him. This burden on the poet to establish his own poetic work, is compared by Bloom with the smothering experience of cherubs literally sitting on top of you, as he experienced in a dream, but which most certainly casts back to the description of the cherubs which cover the “fiery stones” (Ezek. 28:16)!
These “fiery stones” are the Old Testament equivalent of what 1Pet. 2:5 calls “living stones”, which point to the individual rhema identities which, within the idiom of house building of Scripture, become the building blocks with which the house of God, the tabernacle, temple or New Jerusalem, is built (1Cor. 3:9; 2Cor. 5:1; Ps. 127:1). Their identities are however kept secret by the cherubs, and they need to struggle for a uniquely own identity, akin to a caterpillar in a cocoon who must struggle to create its strong, coloured wings of calling. Your true identity is obviously not the identity of the spiritual father, although it is enmeshed with it because of an irrevocable spiritual dynamic. It requires an intense struggle to gain the true identity – similar to Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel of the Lord at the Jabbok – and through this receiving a change of his seed (and descendants). (Read the teaching of Day 1235-1251 again.) Your limp discloses this life-changing transition. Never trust a man of God without a limp.
To illustrate how specifically God currently guides me in the writing of this piece, I documented the testimony around Harold Bloom. Tracing something that appeared without a reference in my dissertation – a document which signifies my own academic searching – again unexpectedly leads me to Harold Bloom. This is an absolute unexpected turn, and then, even more surprisingly, to then find the reference to the concept of cherubs, is absolutely supernatural. God’s heuristic guidance is written all over it.
We then need to walk further down this unfolding path. One of the important principles in this process is what Rom. 7:6 (AMP) calls, “[under obedience to the promptings] of the Spirit in newness [of life]”. While writing this teaching I’ve been experiencing a constant prompting to find out what the name of the interviewer I mentioned earlier, Imre, means. Here he served as the one pointing out the path, the mediator, the Rosetta Stone, between me and my father in literature, Harold Bloom. To get to the texts of “ourselves”, he had to mediate, without being at all aware of my spiritual path of adventure and the unfolding of my identity. Because he did what he had to do, I can do what I need to do. This is one of the great mysteries of the rhema-identity dynamic which in the idiom of Ps. 19 becomes a silent voice that acts as a guideline across the entire earth. In this eternal house of words, this tent of calling in which the Son of Righteousness can linger, He makes Godly intimacy possible, and sees how the Bridegroom joyfully shows us the Way. This is an interactive prophetic word (Ezra 6:14) that is not prescriptive, but which manifests itself in and through our uncertain search and His undeniable presence.
If you do an internet search for the name Imre, the very first reference that appears, is a company that bears this name, whose motto is: The Transformative Agency of Today. Since mottos are currently directing our discourse, it is of great importance not to overlook this. This mediator is the transformation agent who mediates your calling, today. In addition: is it not a beautiful description of the role of cherubs, and of the Rosetta Stone! Small details often carry great implications, so please note that the word transformative is used here, and not the expected transformation. Transformative points to the continuous action of change that undergirds this process. Apart from Imre transforming, they themselves also transform!
The name Imre/Imri is Hungarian, and means power. Remember the well-known Scripture from 1Cor. 1:24, which spells out, “Christ is the power of God”. There is thus immediately also a link with Christ, based on this Biblical equivalence. (Read the teaching of Day 575-577 again.) But there is also an immediate link between Christ and the name Imri. The name Imri also has an immediate sound association with the well-known, but fictive word that appears in the Bible, INRI. Do you still remember what the latter’s acronym means? We find it in John 19:19: “Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” In Latin this is Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum. But it is unlikely that it is only the word INRI that was carved, as verse 20 also makes it clear that the title was not just in Latin, but also in two other languages: “Then many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.”
Even though the word INRI is thus actually strictly speaking a fictitious text, it has over the course of time become a pretty standard reference to that which Jesus was called. Most translations define this sign above Jesus’s head as a title (titlos), with AMP who further describes it as “an inscription on a placard”. The BBE calls it “a statement in writing”. But the version of Matthew (27:37) calls it a written “accusation”. One then again understands why the priests of the Jews said to Pilate: “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘He said, “I am the King of the Jews.”’ To which Pilate adamantly responded that what he has written will remain.
This incident is of great importance, as the fact remains that the word INRI is strictly speaking (1) fictive, (2) describes identity, (3) that it is “a statement in writing”, most likely carved/engraved, (4) that the phrase “He said” points to a different version, or then a similar, but different formulation, and especially (5) that it was written in all three languages, necessarily reminds one of the Rosetta Stone! And then it is a most beautiful example of what we meant by the third word for the word word in Greek, namely epos, or epic.
Remember what we explained in the teaching of Day 1704-1705 about the word word as in-between-text, that it is translated with almost similar phrases like “might even say”, “as it may be said”, “in a sense”, “ultimately you could even say …”, “it could be said” (NET), and “moreover, in a sense …” The word word here is actually hidden, especially because it is a type of intermediary word – it stands between logos and rhema. The Bibleos Interlinear Bible beautifully translates it as “a word to speak through”! That which appears on the sign above Jesus’s head, can transform into something else, BUT it also has much transformative power!
The influence of this Image replica of the Father figure on the cross in the temporary, physical realm has much great implications than the same word in the eternal, spiritual realm. With the transition between the two, mortality is alleviated (2Cor. 13:4). Again remember 1Cor. 15:54 – “So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’” There is an INRI which feels, as for Harold Bloom, if it is a smothering experience, where the cherubs sit on top of you (as fiery stone), covering you, but then the invincible life breaks through. “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” (Col. 3:3-4).
• Selah: Explain the concept INRI to someone.
• Read: 1Kings 1-9
• Memorise: 1 Kings 1:34 (what is the typological meaning of this?)
