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Volume 45:

Corinthians I & II (full text) and Hymns (full text)

In the first volume of Sacred Writing, Christianity was represented by the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, who was one of Paul's followers in the early church. This Pauline emphasis is continued in the the second volume, which begins with Paul's letters to the Corinthians. It's true that Luke's two books and Paul's epistles make up the bulk of the New Testemant, but taken alone they offer an incomplete view of Christian scripture. Mostly, the Classics ignore the Johnnine material -- John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation.

What's the difference? Well, the Gospel of John is substantially more mystical than the three synoptic Gospels, and it emphasizes the divinity of Jesus to a much larger degree. As for Revelation, it's sheer strangeness has made it the most popular New Testament books among casual readers. The mystical and apocalyptic elements of Christianity are much in vogue these days, but to men like those who edited the Harvard Classics, admirers of Emersonian Unitarianism, Christianity mostly meant a stable social structure and an almost rationalist ethical system. One can see why they would avoid John, and why they would be drawn to Paul, who emphasizes action in the world and the practical matters of Church organization.

Indeed, some of the most famous passages of Paul's letters read something like modern arguments for right action over religious dogma:

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is king; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.

Buddhist Writings (full text)

One consequence, probably unintended, of the editorial emphasis throughout the selection of Judeo-Christian scripture is to make the eastern religions that round out this volume seem more foreign to the western reader than they probably are. There is nothing in the Job or Acts to prepare us for their elaborate cosmologies and schemes of reincarnation represented in Buddhist and Hindu writing. But once we have assimilated these elements, both faiths emerge in this volume as remarkably practical worldviews.

There is a great section among the Buddhist writings entitled, Questions Which Tend Not to Edification. In it, a religious seeker complains:

These theories which The Blessed One [i.e., the Buddha] has left unelucidated, has set aside and rejected,--that the world is eternal, that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, that the world is infinite, that the soul and the body are identical, that the soul is one thing and the body another, that the saint exists after death, that the saint does not exist after death, that the saint both exists and does not exist after death, that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death,—these The Blessed One does not elucidate to me. And the fact that The Blessed One does not elucidate them to me does not please me nor suit me.

He goes to the Buddha to ask him to clear these matters up, but the Buddha only questions the purpose of such speculation:

It is as if ... a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions, his relatives and kinsfolk, were to procure for him a physician or surgeon; and the sick man were to say, I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, or to the Brahman caste, or to the agricultural caste, or to the menial caste.

The point is that Buddhism relates to the immediate problem of suffering in the world. Even its most complex elaborations stem from this problem. There aren't many religions that are willing to admit that many questions -- perhaps even the questions that seem most urgent to us -- simply can't be answered. Simply stop asking them -- this is far easier said then done. But the mere suggestion that we might accept the limits of our knowledge may be what feels strangest to us about these teachings.

The Bhagavad-Gita (full text)

The Hindu poem Bhagavad-Gita is a dialogue between a prince named Arjuna and Krishna, and incarnation of the god Vishnu, who remains for the most part disguised as a chariot driver. The two stand on the cusp of a battle in which Arjuna is reluctant to fight, but Krishna admonishes him:

How hath this weakness taken thee? Whence springs
The inglorious trouble, shameful to the brave,
Barring the path of virtue? Nay, Arjun!
Forbid thyself to feebleness! it mars
Thy warrior-name! cast off the coward-fit!
Wake! Be thyself! Arise, Scourge of thy foes!

The pacificist mortal is set straight by the hawkish god -- admittedly, it's a troubling context for a devotional work. But as the poem progresses, fighting in this battle emerges as a metaphor for living in the world. It struck me as a particularly apt metaphor for our own time, when any level of participation in society seems to implicate us in countless troubling acts. Like most of the Buddhist writings before it, the Bhagavad-Gita is ultimately concerned with a deeply practical question, in this case one with which nearly every religious tradition struggles -- is it better to engage with the world, or remove oneself from it? As I understood it, the answer it provides is something like both. Specifically, we should work in the world but practice detachment from the fruits of our labors.

I told thee, blameless Lord! there be two paths
Shown to this world; two schools of wisdom. First
The Sankhy's, which doth save in way of works
Prescribed by reason; next, the Yog, which bids
Attain by meditation, spiritually:
Yet these are one! No man shall escape from act
By shunning action; nay, and none shall come
By mere renouncements unto perfectness.
Nay, and no jot of time, at any time,
Rests any actionless; his nature's law
Compels him, even unwilling, into act;
[For thought is act in fancy]. He who sits
Suppressing all the instruments of flesh,
Yet in his idle heart thinking on them,
Plays the inept and guilty hypocrite:
But he who, with strong body serving mind,
Gives up his mortal powers to worthy work,
Not seeking gain, Arjuna! such an one
Is honorable. Do thine allotted task!
Work is more excellent than idleness;
The body's life proceeds not, lacking work.

Do the work; reject the reward. It seems a bit like the worst of both worlds. If you're going to give up the gain of work anyway, at least practicing detachment lets you get more sleep. Compare to Ecclesiastes: that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy good in all his labor, is the gift of God. But it's also a moving idea, that each of us has a job to do, and that the job itself brings honor with it. The good is the labor. Do thine allotted task! Now if we could just figure out what that is.

Chapters from the Koran (full text)

Another result of the editorial choices for the Hebrew and Christian bibles is that a reader of the Classics first encounters many of the most famous biblical figures in selections from the Koran. Before reading these selections, I'd known that the Koran includes Abraham and Isaac, Noah and his ark, Moses and Aaron, Joseph and his brothers, Jesus and Mary; and I'd known that Muslims have historically referred to Jews and Christians as people of the book. But I didn't realized the extent to which the Koran, especially its earliest Suras, represents a kind of dialogue with the other monotheistic traditions. Some chapters add details that weren't included in the original stories, like this conversation between Abraham and his father.

And mention, in the Book, Abraham; verily, he was a confessor,--a prophet. When he said to his father, O my sire! why dost thou worship what can neither hear nor see nor avail thee aught? O my sire! verily, to me has come knowledge which has not come to thee; then follow me, and I will guide thee to a level way. O my sire! serve not Satan; verily, Satan is ever a rebel against the Merciful. O my sire! verily, I fear that there may touch thee torment from the Merciful, and that thou mayest be a client of Satan.

Said he, What! art thou averse from my gods, O Abraham? verily, if thou dost not desist I will certainly stone thee; but get thee gone from me for a time!

Said he, Peace be upon thee! I will ask forgiveness for thee from my Lord; verily, He is very gracious to me: but I will part from you and what ye call on beside God, and will pray my Lord that I be not unfortunate in my prayer to my Lord.

And when he had parted from them and what they served beside God, we granted him Isaac and Jacob, and each of them we made a prophet; and we granted them of our mercy, and we made the tongue of truth lofty for them.

It struck me that this dialogue, which appears without any larger narrative context, makes almost no sense without some familiarity with its biblical antecedents. This is a literary point, not a politcal or historical one. But it's also a reminder of the extent to which Islam and Christianity both depend on their Abrahamic foundation. At their best, these faiths build on that foundation, modifying lasting truths for different times and places. At their worst, they vilify a tradition without which they would never exist.


--CRB, November 28, 2007

The Five Foot Shelf