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GOD AS A WRITER: OMNIPRESENCE AND THE ART OF DISSIMULATION1 By Jos Faur*

The Greeks and Writing The Greek gods were gods of action. They were capable of extraordinary feats and breathtaking performances. They possessed knowledge and could display great wisdom and cunning. None of them, however, could either write or read: the Greek gods were illiterate. Indeed, the Muses could inspire the poets, but neither they nor the poets they inspired could express their thoughts in writing. For the Greeks, writing was some sort of counterfeit. At best, it was an aid for memorization, but it always falsified and distorted the original spoken word. "The written word," says Socrates to Phaedrus, is "a reminiscence of what we know," and what was previously "taught and communicated orally" to us. But only oral communication is "written in the soul, which is the true way of writing." In oral communication alone, "is there clearness and perfection and seriousness." Writing is lifeless and cannot defend itself: "Writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence." Writing is repetitive: it always tells you the same thing. To the Egyptian god purported to have invented writing, it was told: "This invention of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." The memory and knowledge acquired through writing are hollow: "You have found a specific, not for memory but for reminiscence, and you give your disciples only the pretense of wisdom; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally * Jos Faur is an expert on talmudic literature and rabbinic law. His last work, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition (Indiana University Press, 1986), was widely acclaimed as a brilliant and lasting contribution to rabbinics.

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know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality."1 Accordingly, the Greeks preferred not to use writing even as an aid to memory. The art of memory, founded by Simonides of Ceos (ca. 556-468 B.C.E.) and adopted subsequently by all rhetorical schools, consisted in imprinting a building and all its images in the memory of the student, and then in proceeding to associate the words of the composition at hand with the already-memorized building and images.2 It is not surprising, therefore, that the Greeks treated scribes as outcasts.3 More importantly, only oral speech could evoke recollection of the knowledge that was somehow already contained in the soul.4 Plato's choice of the form of dialogue, rather than of straight prose, indicates his preference for the oral over the written form of expression. Ideally, all knowledge should be transmitted orally. The written dialogue offers the closest approximation to speech. "Plato regarded the dialogue form as a philosophical deuteros pious, a second best," notes Kenneth Seeskin, because "in a dialogue, the author i s . . . directing a conversation."5 The ultimate purpose of these dialogues is not merely to teach, but "to assist in the process of recollection."6 Writing in Judaism In Judaism, writing borders on the realm of the sacred. It is not merely an instrument for memorization, it generates meaning. The Rabbis distinguish between writing (koteb) and marking (roshem). The latter stands for a mark.7 As in hieroglyphics, a mark stands for a thing, not for a word. Writing stands for a word, not for a thing. The components of writing are letters. Concerning the desecration of the Sabbath, the Rabbis declared that "writing" must comprise at least two letters. Each letter stands for a phonetic sound. By itself a letter is meaningless; meaning is generated with the combination of at least two letters. An anonymous Hebrew grammarian from the Middle Ages noted "that a single letter has no meaning until it is joined" with other letters.8 And "writing" is independent of the intention of the writer: one who intended to write "Gadiel" had effected writing upon completing "Gad" since, as the name of one of Jacob's sons, it is a meaningful term.9 Writing takes on an existence of its own; it is independent even of the parchment on which it is written. Consider the following law. One who executes a work on the Sabbath with the intention to damage (kavvanato le-quaquel) is not guilty of transgressing the biblical injunction against "working." ("Work" is

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associated with a positive task such as building, not with destruction.) And yet if he were to write on a skin with the intention to damage it, he stands guilty, because, as Maimonides (1135-1204) explained, "his infraction is not because of the place of the writing, but because of the writing itself."10 Writing creates its own space: it imbues the parchment with sanctity, rather than the other way around. Accordingly, he who sees a scroll of the Tora burning must rend his garment twice, once because of the parchment, and once because of the writing (Mo*ed Qatan 26a). Similarly, R. Hananya ben Teradyon (second century), while burning at the stake with the scroll of the Tora, declared that he "saw [only] the parchment burning, while the letters flew away" ('AbodaZara 17a). The God of the Hebrews is eminently literate. God communicates in writing: The tablets of the covenant were written by God (Exod. 31:8, cf. 34:1), as was the Law of which Moses was only God's pen. God transmits it to Moses by reading from the Tora, which was written before the creation of the world (Pesahim 54a). In this primeval stage, the heavenly "Tora was written with black fire on white fire" (Midrash Tehillim XC, 12). The Tora revealed to Moses was "kindled" from that Tora (PT Sheq-alim VI, 1, 16b). This leads directly into Julia Kristeva's definition of "text," where, as in biology, the written text is a phenotext projecting the genotext: Let us designate as a text any linguistic practice in which the operations of the genotext appear in laminar form in the phenotext, so that the phenotext serves as a projection of a genotext and invites the reader to reconstruct from it the entire signifying process.11 In mystical Jewish tradition, the primeval, heavenly Tora the genotext comprises both the "Written" and the "Oral" Laws. The rupture between the "Written" and "Oral" came as a result of revelation and the production of a phenotext. Through interpretation the application of the Oral Law to the written text the student reconstructs and restores the primeval Tora. (It will be seen that in the process the student becomes the embodiment of the Tora). Since God's speech, logos in Greek and memra in Aramaic, proceeds from a "written" Tora, God's speech is writable;12 more precisely, it is writing. First and foremost, for the Hebrews, God's speech is "performative."13 According to Scripture the universe was created by the speech of God (Ps. 33:6). For the Rabbis, God's words are God's actions.14 "How does one know that the words [of God] are as actions?" asked R. EPazar

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(d. 279). "Because it is written 'By the speech of God the heavens were made'" (Ps. 33:6) (Shabbat 119b). At the same time, creation itself is also described as the writing of God. Levi ben Gereshom (1288-1344) has pointed up that the biblical expression, "the book which you [God] have written" (Exod. 32:32), stands for the universe created by God: "Behold the book that God wrote is everything that exists."15 "In thy book," says the Psalmist to God, "all my members shall be written" (Ps. 139:16); i.e., he shall become an integral part of creation, the Book of God.16 The Rabbis, too, refer to "the letters with which the heavens and earth were created" (Berakhot 55a). We must therefore conclude, with Judah ha-Levi (ca. 1075-1141), that in Jewish thought "the writings of God are His creations and the words of God His writings."17 "Writing" is creation itself.18
Truth

This identification of "speech/writing" separates the logos of the Greeks from the logos of the Hebrews. For Plato, the logos is fundamentally static;19 its ultimate function is apophansis, that is, "showing," "revealing," things as they are.20 In the same fashion, the truth of the Greeks is aletheia: it "un-veils" and "dis-covers" the evident; it is not creative. As Seeskin shows, in the Socratic dialogue the reader participates in the discovery: "If we do make a discovery after reading a Socratic dialogue, the credit does not go to Socrates but to us."21 The truth is, however, already there. The Socratic theory of recollection implies that, somehow, the truth was already known to us when the soul was in a disembodied state.22 The logos of Philo, as well as the memra of the Rabbis, is dynamic and creative; it does not depend on an ulterior order. Rather it establishes the order of things. For the Hebrews, the truth cannot be "dis-covered." It demands a fundamental process of decoding and interpretation whereby the reader acts as a writer and becomes finally the text itself: it is a creative and dynamic process.23 In the initial stages of learning, the student learns the Tora of God. Later on, through a process of interpretation, the Tora is embodied in the student and becomes the student's own. "At the beginning [the Tora] is called on the name of the Lord, but at the end it will be called on his [the student's] name" ('Aboda Zara 19a). Since at this initial stage, the God-given text is superior to the student, the Rabbis note: "If people stand up [in reverence] for those who study it [the Tora], how much more so [should they stand up] for it [the Tora] itself (Quidushim 33b).

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At a later stage, the student is the embodiment of the Tora and is transformed into "a great individual" (gabra rabba); at this stage the student is greater than the God-given text. "How boorish are those people," remarked Raba (d. 352), "that stand up [in reverence] for the scroll of the Tora, but they don't stand up for a great individual" (Makkot 22b).24 Concerning these different stages, it was taught: "Whoever honors the Tora, his body will be honored by the people" (Pirge Abot IV, 8).25 Michael David Levin explains the existential process whereby the student becomes the embodiment of the text: As we perform the prescribed rituals with greater and greater skill, we begin to be in-habited by the powerful living sense of the outer texts. With the passage of time continuously repeated in the reading, inner and outer texts may begin to coincide. Were there no longer any difference between them, understanding would be complete: thanks to the performance of the rituals prescribed by the outer texts, the sense of the inner would be fully translated. We wouldfinallybecome the one true text.26 It was said in the name of Theodor Lessing (1827-1933) that if God were to declare that in his right hand he had the truth, and that in his left hand he had the investigation of the truth, Lessing would ask for the investigation of the truth.27 Lessing was thus choosing the Hebrew concept of truth. A "truth" that can be "dis-covered" excludes human participation. By declaring that God's word (logos) had become flesh (John 1:14), John was exchanging the writable logos of the Hebrews for the "revealing" logos of the Greeks. Thus, he was laying the ground for the exclusion of the Book and of reading: the flesh is "unwritable"; it is apophansis; it can be contemplated, but unlike the Tora it cannot t)e read. The ftesh-logos is anti-Book: "For the Law came through Moses," said John, "but grace and truth [aletheia] came through Jesus" (John 1:18). But Christian worship does include reading the Scripture as integral. Metaphysical Theology/Literary Theology We may now distinguish two types of theology: the metaphysical theology of the Greek gods, and the literary theology of the Hebrews. An ontic-ontological entity determined by metaphysical necessities is in and by itself; it does not indicate anything except itself. In the physicalmetaphysical realm of the Greeks things simply are: they don't signify. Ontology, or the grasp of the beingness of things, is the product of illiterate gods: it excludes reading and meaning. For the Hebrews, the

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universe must be approached semiologically, as if physical reality and human events were signs and letters integrating a single Cosmic Book. Things (and events) do not simply be. They signify and require "reading," that is, decoding and interpretation. Elsewhere, I have illustrated the difference between the ontological and semiological approach. Suppose that an object with all kinds of marks reached this planet from outer space. One may regard the marks as totally irrelevant, like the lines on the palm of a hand, or the stripes of a tiger, and proceed to examine its physical and chemical composition. On the other hand, the marks may be regarded as meaningful signs, such as in writing and mathematics. In this case, one ought to concentrate on decoding the message. The physical aspects of the object must be regarded as irrelevant to the actual message, in the same manner as the color of the ink or the material on which a letter was written is irrelevant to its meaning.28 As the writing of God, the world must be, first and foremost, meaningful: it must be the subject of decoding and interpretation. From the point of view of metaphysics, the universe must only be: meaning and significance are mere interpolations interfering with the ultimate reality of things. Ultimately, the whole issue as to whether there is a Creator or whether the universe simply is revolves on whether one wishes to regard this world in the Greek or in the Hebrew fashion. Were one to consider this world as an ontological entity, pointing to nothing except itself, the whole notion of a Maker is useless. On the other hand, one cannot possibly begin to decode a mark unless one presupposes that it is significant, that it was intentional: There cannot be "writing" without a "writer." The search for "meaning" and "sense," the notion that things and events have an explanation, the quest for cryptographic and hrmeneutic methods that will unlock the "mysteries" of the universe all these presuppose a Cosmic Book and a communicative Author. Accordingly, whereas the Greeks invented historia, the objective description of human events, the Hebrews invented historiography, which is the interpretation, that is, the decoding of the significance of historical events. The fundamental premise of Hebrew historiography is that there are no disconnected events, but as lines of a book, events interrelate and integrate the message. In the final analysis, traditional theology is a contradiction in terms, as it tries to apply to the illiteral world of the Greeks ideas that originated in the "Book/Universe" of the Hebrews. The issues raised by metaphysical theology, such as the problems of creation ex nihilo, causality, determinism, etc., and all the array of ontological and epistemologica!

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notions, are inapplicable to literary theology. The purpose of this essay is to indicate some of the problems peculiar to a literate God. More specifically, by probing into one of the fundamental problems of the writer, we gain a better understanding of the God of the Scripture. Omnipresence and Dissimulation A consummate writer, who has mastered the skills of the trade, is faced with the problem of omnipresence and omniscience. On the one hand, as an author, the writer has divine-like power to endow characters with any personality the writer wishes and to affect the events and final outcome of the story. On the other hand, in order to be readable, the author's omnipresence and omniscience must be hidden from the text. The author must appear as a disinterested party, indifferent to the plot. James Joyce (1882-1941) indicates the specific role of the writer, which is not unlike that of the Creator: "The artist like the God of creation remains within, behind, or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."29 T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) alluded to the same problem. To be successful, the writer must be totally omnipresent and totally hidden: "The world of a great poetic dramatist is a world in which the creator is everywhere present, and everywhere hidden."30 Dissimulation is the art by which the author hides his or her presence. "The poet is each one of the people of his fictitious world," says Borges. "He is every breath and every detail. One of the tasks, certainly not the easiest, is to hide or dissimulate that omnipresence."31 At the cosmological level, dissimulation is the supreme task of the Creator who, as with the great poetic dramatist of Eliot, must be "everywhere present and everywhere hidden." "God, where shall I find Thee, and Thine place is lofty and hidden?" asked Judah ha-Levi. "And where shall I not find Thee, and Thine Glory fills the Universe!"32 Regarding God and dissimulation, Derrida wrote: "Whether He is Being or the master of beings, God himself is, and appears as what He is, within difference, that is to say, as difference and within dissimulation."33 Francisco Snchez (1550/51-1623), the son of conversos and the father of modern skepticism, pointed out the perennial game of dissimulation being played by nature: "The variety is so great, that nature seems to be playing in it, and enjoying our confusion; as we search for it here and there, it stands before our eyes, laughing at us and teasing us." 34 The unknowability and mystery of God is the distance that separates all literary figures from their author. God's response to Moses, "You

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cannot see my face...and live" (Exod. 33:20), expresses the absolute distance that must separate every literary figure from the author. This point has been brilliantly illustrated by Borges in Inferno, I, 32. Both the leopard who had inspired Dante to write one word, and Dante himself, could grasp their role only in a dream that they must necessarily forget upon waking up: it is as difficult for Dante to understand his inclusion in Creation, as for the leopard to understand his inclusion in Dante's Inferno. One of the ways that Scripture accomplishes dissimulation at the literary level is with usage of the third person. This is particularly obvious in the narratives concerning God and those events that only God could know, e.g., "At the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Here, God, the Creator of the universe, uses third person narrative to record the moments of Genesis. As with Joyce, the author here is "invisible, refined out of existence." According to the Rabbis, when God passed in front of Moses and revealed to him his practice of mercy, God spoke of himself in third person. It was God himself who proclaimed to Moses: "The Lord, the Lord is Merciful and Compassionate . . . " (Exod. 34:6).35 The use of the third person for the purposes of dissimulation becomes clearer upon realizing that in Semitic grammatical theory, the third person is not another "person," but, rather, the non-person. In Semitics, only the first two persons, who participate directly in the act of speech, are "persons." The third person, Hebrew nistar, Arabic ghaibu, is "absent" from the act of speech and expresses only impersonal language.36 Replication Dissimulation is related to replication the principal objective of the writer. Why write a novel?" asked Miguel de Unamuno (18641936). "To become a novelist," he answered. "And why does one become a novelist? To create the reader, to become one with the reader. And only by becoming one can the novelist and the reader of the novel be saved from radical solitude."37 Accordingly, every creative work is, somehow, autobiographical. Again, quoting Unamuno: Yes, every novel, every work offiction,every poem, when alive is autobiographical. Everyfictionalcharacter, every poetic personage that an author creates becomes a part of the author himself. And if he happens to bring into the poem a man of flesh and blood that he knew, this is so after he had made him his own, a part of himself. The great historians are also

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autobiographical. The tyrants that Tacitus described are himself.... The supposed impersonality or objectivity of Flaubert is a lie. All the poetic personages of Flaubert are Flaubert, and Emma Bovary more than anyone else.38 The same applies to the God of the Scripture, who creates humanity in God's selem, "image" (Gen. 1:16). The Hebrew selem comes from the Akkadian salmu (pi. salme), where it refers to an image consecrated to a deity.39 It consequently becomes the abode of the spirit ofthat deity and the deity identifies with it: "Whatever is done to the salmu directly affects the deity.40 The salme were "statues," "figurines," and occasionally inscribed stelai, perhaps without any figurative representation.41 A person could be a salmu of a god. An Assyrian king is addressed as "the very image [salmu] of the god Shamash."42 Since there are found personal names with the component salmu, it seems that it was not uncommon for a person to be the "image" of a god.43 The salmu, however, was not a pictorial representation of the original.44 Its identification with the deity came when the deity imbued it with its spirit and "dwelt" in it. This came as a result of a ceremony known as "the opening of the mouth," whereby the god infuses its spirit into the salmu; at that very moment the salmu is "born" and acquires all the living attributes of the god.45 As Maimonides had already indicated and it is confirmed by Mesopotamian sources the Hebrew selem is not a pictorial representation of the original.46 Indeed, Scripture teaches that humankind is God's selem because God had consecrated it. As with "the opening of the mouth," God had imbued the selem with the divine spirit; God had "blown into its nostrils a breath of life." At that very moment the man "became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). Thus, God identifies with humankind, God's selem. God, prior to creation, was in infinite perfection infinitely alone. Accordingly, creation, as with the writing of the artist, is to puncture loneliness by reduplicating in the "reader" the image of the author. Since God had endowed humankind with freedom, the human being is not only the protagonist of creation, but is also the reader. As with Unamuno, the divine Author is created by the reader. There is reciprocity between humankind's vision of God and its perception of itself: "You have made me into a single unit in this world," said God to Israel, "and I shall make you into a single unit in this world" (Berakhot 6a). Without needing to have recourse to the subaltern god of the Gnostics, responsible for the imperfections and evil present in the world, the Hebrews regard the imperfections

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and evil of this world as humanity's direct responsibility, related to its perception of itself and of God. Hayyim ben 'Attar (1696-1743) explained that God reveals himself to humankind, in accordance with its predisposition.47 Hayyim Palaggi (1788-1869) further developed this idea: Moses perceived God as Merciful and Compassionate because he himself was merciful and compassionate.48 Accordingly, the rabbinic doctrine of imitatio Dei, "Just as God is compassionate, you too become compassionate,"49 involves also the reverse proposition: "Just as you are compassionate, God too becomes compassionate." This doctrine leads to what Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) says: "God is in the making."50 Maxim Gorki (1868-1936) wrote that there are two classes of people, those who follow God and those who make God. Literary theology implies the latter. In metaphysical theology one can only follow the gods. Since the ultimate significance of God, the Author, is determined by humankind, as a final punishment God "deletes" [mohe] the wicked from his book. "He who has sinned against me, I shall delete him [emhennu] from my book" (Exod. 32:33), says God to Moses. Thus, the wicked are "deleted from the book of life" (Ps. 69:29, cf. Exod. 17:14, Deut. 9:14, 25:19; 2 Kings 21:13). The same expression is used to designate God's final punishment to humankind in the Flood (Gen. 6:7; 7:23, 47). Conceptually, mohe is related to "writing." It is the act of blotting out something written (cf. Num. 5:23).51 It is worthy of notice that the Rabbis define mohe as one who deletes writing, a scribble, or a spot from a parchment for the purpose of writing in its place.52 In the same fashion, the divine Author deletes a character from his book to write something else in its place. Th election of Israel can best be understood in terms of writing and the book. The name of the Lord was bestowed upon Israel (Deut. 28:10; cf. Jer. 7:1 Off.; Amos 9:12; Dan. 9:19; 2 Chron. 7:14) in the sense that he identifies (cf. Isa. 4:1) with the people of Israel, the principal protagonist of the book. Let us summarize. God ad intra, as he is to himself (= the En Sof of the Cabbala) is, as Maimonides had explained, above and beyond definition.53 Paraphrasing Maimonides, Borges declared: "I felt that the First Being, the En-Sof, cannot be defined. It cannot even be said that He exists.54 Even that is too concrete. Then you cannot say that He is wise or that He knows. Because if He knows, then there are two things the known and the One who knows."55 Since the human person is both a character and the reader of creation, God is "everywhere present and everywhere hidden." On the one hand, there is a literary

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principle whereby the characters of a composition are precluded from grasping ther author, and the significance of their role, like the leopard and Dante. At the same time, the author makes his or her presence known to the reader to the reader who, in the words of Roland Barthes (1915-1980), functions as a writer. Notes 1. This article was inspired by an interview with Borges by Amelia Barili, "Borges on Life and Death," New York Times Book Review, July 13, 1986. And it is dedicated to the memory of Jorge Luis Borges (1900-1986): the master of dissimulation. 2. Phaedrus, in Collected Works of Plato, trans. B. Jowett (New York: Greystone Press), pp. 471, 468. 3. See Francis A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1966). 4. David Nunes Carvalho, Forty Centuries of Ink (New York: Banks Law Publishing, 1904), p. 19. 5. Concerning the various interpretations of Socrates' notion of recollection and knowledge, see the valuable analysis of Kenneth Seeskin, Dialogue and Discovery: A Study in Socratic Method (Albany, N.Y.: State University Press, 1987), pp. 103-110. 6. Ibid., pp. 4, 5. 7. Ibid., p. 17. 8. Mishna Shabbat XII, 3. See Maimonides' Commentary, ad loa, where he explains that according to the Rabbis roshem is a "derivative" (toleda) of koteb (cf. Mishne Tora, Shabbat XI, 17). Contrary to current opinion, this view presupposes that Semitic or alphabetical writing does not derive from a primitive system of "markings": "marking" will not evolve into alphabetical writing. 9. See Joseph Derenbourg, "Manuel du Lecteur," Journal Asiatique (1870), p. 346, cf. p. 324. 10. Mishna Shabbat XII, 3; cf. Mishne Tora, Shabbat XI, 10. 11. Mishne Tora, Shabbat XI, 9. 12. In A. J. Greimas, ed., Essais de semiotique potique (Paris: Larousse, 1972), p. 216. Quoted by David Michael Levin, "The Living Body of Tradition," Religious Traditions (University of Sidney), vol. 5 (1983), p. 46. 13. Thus, all the words that God communicated to Moses were committed to writing. Similarly, the Rabbis used "said" in place of "wrote," as when referring to the authorship of three biblical books that according to rabbinic tradition were written by King Solomon; they say: "Solomon said three books, Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes" (see Shir ha-Shirim Rabba 1, 5, 6, 9). 14. On performative utterances, see mile Ben veniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meeks (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1971), pp. 231-238. Thus the Rabbis interpreted, "I will be that which I will be" (Exod. 3:14), as a performative, and explained: "I will be with

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them in this oppression and I will be with them in the oppression under the Kingdoms" (Berakhot 9a). 15. On the simultaneity of God's speech and actions, see my Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 23-24. This notion is the subject of one of Miguel de Unamuno's poems, "Logos," in Antologa potica (Madrid: EspasaCalpe, 1959), p. 152. 16. Pirush 'al ha-Tora, ad loe. 17. The standard translation "were written," in the past tense, is wrong. And this translation also misses the point. For the human body as a "text" see "The Living Body of Tradition," Religious Traditions (University of Sidney) 5 (1983), p. 47. 18. Kuzari IV, 25. 19. I have further developed this topic in my Golden Doves with Silver Dots, pp. 59-60; cf. pp. 23-27. 20. See Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), pp. 69-70. 21. See Joseph Kockelmans, "Language, Meaning and Existence," in On Heidegger and Language, ed. and trans. Joseph H. Kockelmans (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), pp. 17-25. 22. Dialogue and Discovery, p. 13. 23. See ibid., pp. 35-37. 24. See Golden Dove with Silver Dots, pp. 23-32, 167, n. 1. 25. On the meaning of gabra rabba, cf. Baba Qamma, 59b. Because the fundamental difference between these two stages of learning was overlooked, these talmudic passages appeared to contradict one another. For some attempts to overcome this "contradiction," see the commentary of the Ran on the Rif, Qiddushin, ad loa, and Moses Almosnino, Yede Moshe (Venice, 5353/1593), 155b156a. 26. Cf. Maimonodes' Commentary, ad loa 27. "The Loving Body of Tradition," p. 54. 28. Quoted by Borges, "Borges on Life and Death," p. 27. 29. See Golden Doves with Silver Dots, pp. 24-25. 30. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: The Modern Library, 1928), p. 252. 31. "The Three Voices of Poetry," in On Poetry and Poets (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy, 1957), p. 112. 32. Jorge Luis Borges, Nueve ensayos dantescos (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1982), pp. 59f. 33. The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, ed. Dov Jarden, vol. 1, no. 97 (Jerusalem, 1978), p. 215. 34. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Blass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 74. 35. Quod nihil scitur, in Opera Philosophica, ed. Joaquim de Carvalho (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1955), p. 44. 36. See Rosh ha-Shana, 17a.

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37. See my "The Third Person in Semitic Grammatical Theory and General Linguistics," Linguistica Biblica Bohn 46 (1979), pp. 106-113. 38. Miguel de Unamuno, "Cmo se hace una novela," in Obras completas, ed. M. Garcia Blanco, vol. 10 (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1958), p. 922. 39. Ibid., pp. 861-862. 40. See Douglas Van Buren, "The Salm in Mesopotamia in Art and Religion," Orientalia, N.S., 10 (1941), pp. 65-92. There were also salm of deified kings, important people, animals, and constellations (see ibid., pp. 75-79, 91). 41. Ibid., pp. 80-91. 42. Ibid., pp. 65-66. 43. Ibid., p. 70. 44. Ibid., pp. 75-76. 45. E.g., there were salm of light, ibid., p. 70; of natural and architectural features, pp. 81-90; of moral qualities and constellations, pp. 90-91. These images were not "replicas" of the original. 46. Ibid., pp. 81, 91. I have developed this subject in "The Biblical Idea of Idolatry," Jewish Quarterly Review 69 (1978), pp. 5-12; "Idolatry," Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 8, els. 1232-1233. 47. Guide for the Perplexed, I, 2. 48. In his Commentary to the Pentatuech Or ha-Hayyim, Exod. 33:11. 49. Re'e Hayyim, vol. 2 (Izmir, 5624/1864), fol. 121b. 50. On this doctrine see George E Moore, Judaism, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 109-111; Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), pp. 194-196. 51. See "Borges on Life and Death," pp. 27, 28. 52. Since sins are inscribed in a celestial record, see Pirgue Abot II, 1, to "forgive" is to "delete" the sin, see Isa. 43:25; 44:22; Ps. 51:3, 4; 109:14; Neh. 3:37. 53. See Mishne Tora, Shabbat XI, 9. 54. See Guide to the Perplexed, I, 57-60. 55. See ibid., I, 57. 56. "Borges on Life and Death," p. 28. Cf. Mishne Tora, Yesode ha-Tora II, 10, and Teshuba V, 5. See also the well known Petihat Eliyahu, found at the beginning of most Sephardic prayer books and in Tiggune ha-Zohar, vol. 1, no. 1 (Izmir, 5585/1825), 49b, 50b.

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