The Holy Bible is unquestionably the most enigmatic book (or, technically, books) in the library of Western Civilization. Many passages in it are virtually incomprehensible (despite the brave, but otherwise palpably inadequate efforts to annotate it with a “Bible-Made-Simple” commentary), while others are only deceptively comprehensible, providing the commentators with rather too obvious superficial illuminations, while denying the reader the foolishly expected access to its deepest mysteries.
In my own Biblical comments, I never pretend to solve any of the mysteries, suggesting, on the contrary, that such a task is impossible. The best approach for us is to engage in para-Biblical, mainly moral, discussions, using the Bible passages as our starting point, but otherwise heeding God’s words to the Prophet Daniel in Daniel 12:9: “Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.”
Thus, my commentary in this entry is by no means an effort to interpret or reinterpret the Bible, but exactly a para-Biblical meditation, and it can only be seen as such.
The words of Jesus in Matthew 19:30: “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first,” are well-known to all, including those who do not have the habit of reading the Scriptures on a regular basis. The commentators have gifted us with at least two very down-to-earth, thoroughly de-mystified explanations of what Jesus really meant to say here.
One, quite reasonably for the Christian interpreters, applies this passage to the role of the Jews as the God-chosen people of the Jewish Old Testament. Called first, they may well end up last, lest they accept the new testament of Jesus Christ, and become Christians.
This explanation sounds credible in the larger context of Matthew 19:28: “And Jesus said unto them: Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Still, it sounds too much like Christian proselytizing among the Jews, and I doubt that a message of Jesus can be reduced to some inter-denominational religious politics. There has to be a broader message, where “following Jesus” means taking the moral path, as opposed to the immoral path, rather than joining a particular religious group. This makes sense, considering that Jesus was talking in time and in place to his immediate disciples, whereas to us his message is timeless and placeless, and needs to be extrapolated from the text, if we want it to speak to us as well.
With regard to the distinction of first and last in this case, we may generalize the question of Jewish exclusivity in application to all sorts of privileges and entitlements which a person may possess in the temporal world, but which cannot be taken by him on the journey to eternity, where a wholly different set of criteria are in place, and where an obscure, pathologically shy clerk from a nondescript insurance office will pull far more weight than a dozen Habsburg Emperors… As you see, I regard immortality and a seat in the throne of God’s glory, in broader than merely theological terms. I believe in the sainthood of all righteous persons, regardless of their religion, and also in the sainthood of God’s elect, but not exactly in Calvinistic terms, as much as of those specially endowed by God with God-like creative genius…
There is a second down-to-earth argument advanced by our socially-conscious commentators. “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:23.) Once again, we find the larger context of the “first-last” quote conducive to the anti-Marxist interpretation, to the effect that all you poor of the world, take heart: you may be last in this world, but in the next world you will definitely be first, as long as you now behave toward your capitalist oppressor, who will be last in the world beyond, where you will at last have the satisfaction of such a reversal of fortunes. (Compare this to a similar argument raised by the early Christian Church Father Tertullian, who long ago promised the Christian righteous the eternal entertainment prepared for them in Heaven, of watching their offenders and all other sinners being tortured in Hell.)
I believe that the implication of this second interpretation (literally: long live the poor!) is quite deplorable. Subconsciously, it promotes the desirability of poverty and of similar social and personal handicaps, ironically, raising a new set of special privileges and entitlements, through poverty and misery in this world, for prominence and honor in the next world. Why try overcome your poverty? Why not self-induce your misery, if that is your surest ticket to Paradise?
Remember those flagellants and other mortifiers of flesh? I refuse to believe that Jesus wanted his first-last metaphor ever to come to that!
(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)
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