Catacomb Resident Blog

Absurdity and Purpose

13 February 2024

We should keep in mind that the chaos of time and the safety of space in Pageau's exploration of Hebrew thinking is not as simple as evil versus good. Each has its place; each is appropriate at some time and place as a primal divine operation.

So the next pairing is that time is associated with rest and work is associated with space. God sends down a plan from above, and we work to manifest that revelation in our work on the dry land. Pageau says, "idleness and rest indirectly cause a return to more primitive stages of creation. This means gradually returning to flooded conditions on the cosmic scale and to wilderness conditions on the human scale." If we leave things to decay for whatever reason, the chaos of unguided nature recovers all things.

If we have a duty to work and build, then it's evil. If we have simply reached the end of our mission, then rest is restorative. Keep in mind that rest, sleep and death are closely associated here. Further, these things can properly be cyclical in some contexts. Also, when we build, we are always pulling away extraneous materials that become leftovers, representing entropy waiting its time to come back home. It's never far away.

By extension, tools represent space and musical instruments bring time into play. Tools are for work, building the pillars, but musical instruments are for rest and recreation, associated with the axle that rolls along pointlessly. You can easily do too much or too little of both. Solomon wrote about the vanity of striving in the sense that work can be obsessive, forgetting its purpose.

The philosophical thread runs farther: "time is associated with vanity and absurdity in biblical cosmology" while "space is associated with reason and rationality" he says (referring to Hebrew wisdom, not western rationality). Here we extend some previous symbols so that "transformation" also means converting something into its own opposite. Thus, time negates all things in the end, including what it changes, swallowing its own tail. Thus, time inverts (dissolves) and reverts (renews) in a cycle.

Pageau reminds us that the Old Testament in particular is dendrocentric -- trees are a fundamental manifestation of God's reason and wisdom appearing on the dry earth He built from the primordial flood. Thus, we have persistent imagery of "fruit" of this or that. Fruit carries the seed. The seed determines the tree; it is reasonable and reliable. It manifests an obvious purpose. We can depend on it, as Creation makes a certain kind of sense even without revelation. Thus, you seek seeds that feed, not poison, because the seed determines the tree, which determines the fruit. Trees = space.

Space is wholly unlike time, in that it does not reverse itself. Instead, it always propagates more of itself through a commitment to purpose. Time is absurd, producing nothing and even reversing itself, or devouring itself. But Ecclesiastes 3 says "to everything a season" -- there is a rightness of choice and action fitting the moment, whether to build or abandon to collapse. Absurdity has its place, too.

In math, time is a big zero and space is a one. Did you know math was inherent in the symbolic and often dramatic narrative of the Bible? There's more along these lines.


Comments

Jay DiNitto

Coincidental, but interesting to note that 0 (time) is a circle, and 1 (space) is a pillar, linking our numberical glyphs to the imagery you mentioned in other posts.


This document is public domain; spread the message.