Mulling over MARNIE TROSCLAIR to STEVE ASHER 30 Apr 2005

Hi Marnie,

 MT> We're going to take a little side tour in this post.  

I like side tours, and perhaps I am easily sidetracked at times.

 MT> But bear with me, I think it will make some sense in the end.  :-) 

It makes sense, even if "through a glass darkly", like much of the other
stuff I look at, which is a bit like solving "Mister Wisdom's Whopper"
crossword, but where I can never see all the clues, let alone all the
answers. I still enjoy the challenge, though.

 MT> The golem is a servant created from dust and returned to dust.  
 MT> The story is of a rabbi / magician / sorcerer said to have formed  
 MT> dust into a living being, an act paralleling God's creation of 
 MT> Adam.   

 MT> The story of the golem echoes a few passages from Genesis:      
 MT> "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and    
 MT> breathed into the nostrils the breath of life; and man became     
 MT> a living soul."  ( Genesis 2:7 ) 

 MT> In Genesis 3, shortly after God discovers that Adam and Eve   had
 MT> acted according to their own desires and were attempting   to hide
 MT> this fact, we read: 
 MT>  
 MT>   "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread; til thou return  
 MT> unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, 
 MT>    and unto dust thou shalt return."   ( Genesis 3:19 ) 
 MT>            
 MT> As we proceed in exploring the symbolism and meaning of the golem, 
 MT> the marks and words on foreheads, etc., let's turn our attention to
 MT>   the Christian celebration of Ash Wednesday.  On that day, the
 MT> priest  dips his thumb into ashes that have been blessed, then uses
 MT> them to   mark the celebrant's forehead in the shape of a cross and
 MT> says,   "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt
 MT> return."   
 MT> You'll want to compare this to what happens to the golem when the 
 MT> rabbi erases the first character of the word written on the
 MT> forehead  of the golem and changes emet to met.   

He dies.

 MT> There are many sources which explore the meaning of the marking of 
 MT> foreheads on Ash Wednesday.  Here are some thoughts from  
 MT> http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/ash_wed.htm 

An interesting page, bookmarked for future use.

 MT> "This is in imitation of the spiritual mark or seal that is put 
 MT> on a Christian in baptism, when he is delivered from slavery   
 MT> to sin and the devil and made a slave of righteousness and     
 MT> Christ. (Rom. 6:3-18). 

 MT>    It is also in imitation of the way the righteousness are     
 MT> described in the book of Revelation, where we read of the     
 MT> servants of God... 
 MT>  
 MT>    "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have    
 MT> sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads."  
 MT>    (Revelation 7:3)  
 MT>  
 MT>    "[The demon locust] were told not to harm the grass of the     
 MT> earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of     
 MT> mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads"     
 MT> (Revelation 9:4) 

 MT> at my sanctuary.'  So they began with the elders who were before   
 MT> the house."  ( Ezekiel 9:4-6 ) 
 MT>  
 MT> Unfortunately, like most modern translations, the one quoted    
 MT> above (the Revised Standard Version, which we have been quoting    
 MT> thus far), is not sufficiently literal.  What it actually says is  
 MT> to place a tav on the foreheads of the righteous inhabitants of 
 MT> Jerusalem.  Tav is one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet,  
 MT> and in ancient script it looked like the Greek letter chi, which
 MT> happens to be two crossed lines (like an "x") and which
 MT> happens to be the first letter in the word "Christ" in Greek
 MT> (christos). The Jewish rabbis commented on the connection
 MT> between tav and chi and this is undoubtedly the mark
 MT> Revelation has in mind when the servants of God are sealed in
 MT> it. 

 MT> The early Church Fathers seized on this tav-chi-cross-christos  
 MT> connection and expounded it in their homilies, seeing in Ezekiel 
 MT> a prophetic foreshadowing of the sealing of Christians as
 MT> servants of Christ.  It is also part of the background to the
 MT> Catholic practice of making the sign of the cross, which in the
 MT> early centuries (as can be documented from the second century
 MT> on) was practiced by using one's thumb to furrow one's brow
 MT> with a small sign of the cross, like Catholics do today at the
 MT> reading of the Gospel during Mass. 

 MT> More to come...  

OK...

Cheers, Steve..

---