Excerpt

MASS NEUROSIS

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, neurosis is a private religion. And religion is a public neurosis. The neurotic has certain actions that must be performed regularly, repetitively, step by step, always in the same sequence. This is known today as obsessive-compulsive behavior.

For example: John S. is a collector of old rock & roll records. So, while his peers access a song by typing the title into a computer and clicking 'enter,' John S. carefully pulls an album from a shelf, removes its plastic sleeve and sets it down, removes its cardboard sleeve and sets it down on top of the plastic sleeve, removes its paper sleeve...and let's keep in mind, this is neurotic, not erotic...He places the vinyl on the turntable touching only the edge and the label, and then carefully moves the stylus to the track he wants to hear. It is a ritual, he says, so that by the time the song begins, he's really ready to hear it.

It's the word 'ritual' that interests me about this case. I hear about this meticulous procedure to hear a song, and I'd say “Yeah, he's neurotic.” Then I see the priest and the communion chalice. They don't just dump some wine in a cup. It's the cup, covered by a layer of linen and a layer of cardboard. The trappings are ceremoniously removed, the chalice is revealed, the wine and water are poured, the chalice is raised, ritual incantations are said or sung – same time, same place, same motions, same words, every week. If I didn't know what religion was, I'd have a hard time distinguishing the priest and his chalice from the nerd and his records.

There are people in the world who pray five times a day, at the same basic times, always facing in the same direction. There are people who brush their teeth five times a day, at the same basic times, facing the same mirror. There are people who don't eat shrimp. And then there's me – if I could, I would eat shrimp five times a day, always facing in the same direction. Not as a salvation thing, or a damnation thing for that matter, I just love eating shrimp.

The Torah contains Ten Commandments... Plus six hundred and three more commandments, a total of six hundred and thirteen. The ten you know, that's like a “Greatest Hits” collection. There are hundreds of laws on how to wash your hands, cook, dress, worship, clean up a mess... Well, obviously the list goes on. And on. And on – it's no coincidence that Freud, who called religion a neurosis, grew up Jewish. The basic function of all this law is purity: worship must be pure, every individual must be pure so that the community will be pure, un-defiled. The individual has a body that must be kept pure, and the community is a body that must be kept pure. Moses and the Hebrews leaving slavery in Egypt probably did come up with Ten Commandments, and a few more. Bodily and community purity were important because they had just been slaves: their bodies had been someone else's property. They got out of that situation and developed a keen interest in hygiene, personal and communal cleanliness.

But most of those six hundred and thirteen commandments come from another time, seven or eight centuries later, when Israel was invaded by the Empire of Babylon. I don't want to get too graphic about this, but the body of Israel was forcefully penetrated by the Babylonian Empire. And it's a bizarre accident of language that the word “Babylonian” has our English word “Baloney” in the middle, because the Babylonian Empire was not baloney, it was a meat-grinder of people and communities. They were shredders of culture. They were kidnappers and rapists of nations.

And it was Israel the abducted hostage and brutalized victim that came up with most of those six hundred and thirteen purity laws. The laws were designed to keep some cultural dignity alive by preserving bodily and community cleanliness: national boundaries had been transgressed, so they focused on maintaining cultural boundaries. And it worked. Of all the nations torn to shreds and ground to a pulp by the Babylonian Empire, the Israelites managed to maintain their cultural identity. Babylon fell almost fifteen centuries ago, Judaism is still alive.

After the Babylonian Empire fell, the Israelites were invaded by the Persian Empire, then the Greeks, then Rome. But the prescription was already written, the Law would serve as a vaccine against cultural contamination, Judean tradition would survive. Neurosis would keep it alive. And then along came some early Christians, saying “All these rules are suffocating us! Freedom from the Law!” And they met with resistance. Well of course they did. Judean culture had survived by the Law for almost five hundred years at that point. Throwing out the Law was a touchy subject.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

Introduction: Songs In The Attic

-Relics

-Double Live Album

Songs Of Love And Hate -or- Old Testament 101, A Musical Revue

-The Song Of Miriam

-The Song Of Deborah

-The Philistine Threat

-The City On The Hill

-Isaiah And The Assyrian Crisis

-By The Waters Of Babylon

-Lamentations

-Persia

-Whither Thou Goest (The Book Of Ruth)

-Visions Of Beasts In Daniel

-Visions Of Beasts In Revelation

-Where Does It All End?

Words (Between The Lines Of Age)

-Two Treaties

-The Ten Commandments

-Twelve Commandments

-In Deep Deuteronomy

-The Greatest Commandments

-Sermon On The Sermon On The Mount

-Preparing For Battle

-Always The Poor

-Who, Why And How?

Dominion

-Who's In Charge Here? (JESUS And Caesar Augustus)

-“Baptism” At Actium

-Tiberius

-Render Unto Caesar

-The Centurion

-Was Mary Political?

-Jesus The Political Comedian

-Lambasted (Palm Sunday As Political Protest Rally)

-Pilate

In The Flesh

-Mass Neurosis

-Demon Invasion (Jesus The Exorcist)

-Puritans (Jesus And The Fundamentalist Pharisees)

-They Ate And Were Filled (Jesus And Food)

-Biology And Its Discontents

-Saul Of Tarsus And Super-Paul (Paul's Body)

-Dictated But Not Read (Paul's Letter To The Romans)

-Puppet Show (The Nicene Creed)

-Unashamed, Unafraid (The Gospel Of Thomas)

Conclusion: The Question Is... What Is The Question?