April 30, 2004
Jewish History According to Antichrist
I am currently reading All Hallow's Eve by Charles Williams . . . and, oh, is it good. The following page-long paragraph struck me when I read it as being the perfect example of why I love Charles Williams. This is the beginning of a long section involving the thoughts of the Antichrist figure in the novel as he contemplates his place in the world and how history and, later, his own life have led to this point. Below is, as you can tell from the title, his view of Jewish history. Note the brilliant way that he has it just off . . . magnificently deceptive, with a few interesting truths poked in to throw you off . . .
Anyway, it's cool. Read it.
Indeed that august race had reached in this being its second climax. Two thousand years of history were drawing to a close; until this thing had happened it could not be free. Its priesthood- the priesthood of a nation- had been since Abraham determined to one End. But when, after other terrible wars had shaken the Roman peace, and armies had moved over Europe, and Caesar (being all that Caesar could be) had been stabbed in his own central place, when that End had been born, they were not aware of that End. It had been proposed that their lofty tradition should be made almost unbearably august; that they should be made the blood companions of their Maker, the own peculiar house and family of its Incarnacy- no more than the Gentiles in the free equality of souls, but much more in the single hierarchy of kindred flesh. But deception had taken them; they had, bidding a scaffold for the blasphemer, destroyed their predestined conclusion, and the race which had been set for the slavation of the world became a judgement and a curse to the world and to themselves. Yet the oaths sworn in heaven remained. It had been the Jewish girl who, at the command of the Voice which sounded in her ears, in her heart, along her blood and through the central cells of her body, had uttered eveywhere in herself the perfect Tetragrammaton. What the high priest vicariously spoke among the secluded mysteries of the Temple, she substantially pronounced to God. Redeemed from all division in herself, whole and identical in body and soul and spirit, she uttered the Word and the Word became flesh in her. Could It have been received by her own people, the grand Judean gate would have been opened for all peoples. It could not. They remained alien- to It and to all, and all to them and- too much!- to It. The Gentiles, summoned by that other Jew of Tarsus, could not bear their vicarious office. Bragging themselves to be the new Israel, they slandered and slew the old, and the old despised and hated the bragging new. Till at last there rose in Europe something which was neither, and set itself to destroy both.
And then, a few pages later, we get to the following really crazy paragraph, concerning the Antichrist himself, and something more:
He was not, in fact, much different from any man, but the possibiliites slowly opened to him were more rare. There shaped itself gradually in his mind a fame beyond any poet's and a domination beyond any king's. But it was fame and domination that he desired, as they did. That his magical art extended where theirs could never reach was his luck. The understanding of his reach had come when he first assisted at a necromantic operation. As the dead body stood and spoke he felt the lordship of that other half of the world. Once, as he had learned the tale, the attempt at domination had been made and failed. The sorcerer who had attempted it had also been a Jew, a descendant of the house of David, who clothed in angelic brilliance had compelled a woman of the same house to utter the Name, and something more thant mortal had been born. But in the end the operation had failed. Of the end of the sorcerer himself there were no records; Joseph ben David had vanished. The living thing that had been born of his feminine counterpart had perished miserably. It had been two thousand years before anyone had dared to risk the attempt again.
That is the most marrow-freezing paragraph I have ever read, I think. The full implication is of immeasurable proportions, but nevermind that . . .
Is there something to this, you think? *notes horrified looks* Wait, let me clarify that. Is there anything to this idea of the Antichrist simply seeing himself as the culmination of the second attempt in history to gain dominance over the human race through some sort of higher powers that he mysteriously finds that he alone possesses? Go ponder that for a bit. Or don't . . .
Bible study time . . . *evil grin*
Posted by Jared at April 30, 2004 10:17 PM | TrackBack