09 March 2024
Pageau returns to the story of Noah after the Flood. He notes that Noah's three sons are parallels of Adam's, one even named the same. Shem takes the same place as his predecessor, as a fit mediator after one of his siblings fails to keep the balance. Of course, Noah was not doing such a good job of that, and Pageau hints that there may have been some misguided effort by Noah to touch spiritual things through wine. At any rate, Ham tattled on his father's private nudity, which correlates to taking up a place in the south lands ("went south" just happens to have a similar symbolism in American vernacular). Japheth and Shem were more noble, and Noah blesses them. Japheth takes up the northern lands and Shem the heart of the world -- the Levant.
Thus, Shem becomes the redemptive anchor point of future generations. We all know the prophecy in Noah's words: Shem is the ancestor of the Messiah (Shem = Semites). The hope of the northern descendants of Japheth will be in the home of the Messiah. And while sad, it has proved generally true that the southern races share in that redemption as slaves of the other two.
Solomon was in many ways a very grand manifestation of this promise to bless humanity through Shem's descendants. Pageau points out dozens of images and symbols in a passage about Solomon. I don't have room to share them all here, but I can tell you that the common element is how Solomon was the pinnacle of Hebrew biblical culture, pulling together an ideal balance between heaven and earth, above and below, tree and sea, space and time, north (Tyre) and south (Sheba), etc. He manages to move beyond many of his predecessors in this role of manifesting the Word.
People came from all over the known world to test the wisdom of Solomon and found themselves blessed by it. He confirmed a treaty with Hiram of Tyre to get cedars and (and help quarrying stones) for building the Temple. The visit from the Queen of Sheba completes the picture, adding decoration to the building projects. Her questions and riddles represent all the uncertainties of time, and Solomon answers them, uniting it all with the stability of space. He brings the balance between the two.
Of course, all of that balance is lost. Despite all the reams of writing and commentary about why, I submit that we really don't know what was the key to Solomon's fall. None of us have experienced his level of wisdom, so we simply cannot know what temptations he faced that brought down a cascade of failure.
The final two chapters of Pageau's book restate some of the philosophical differences between our western materialistic worldview and the spiritual cosmology of the Bible. He notes that there is a sort of parallel between them. Materialism focuses on energy, matter, time and space. The Bible focuses on heaven, earth, time and space. The first two in each list are mirrors on some level -- heaven/energy and earth/matter -- but the meaning invested in time and space are radically different. The materialist looks at the thing itself, but a spiritual person sees primarily a reflection of things that cannot be spoken, cannot be reduced to mere facts.
Notice that the material view does parallel the spiritual, in that the materialist seeks according to the same need, but without acknowledging the spiritual essence of that seeking. It stops at the immediate level and insists there is nothing more. One of the false claims of those who cling to rationalism, insisting that faith is "reasonable", is that without facts, the parables mean nothing. However, the biblical viewpoint is that without the ineffable truth, the facts don't matter. The problem is that those who cling to "propositional truth" are unable to discern what the Bible actually tries to get across, because they get hung up on seeking the facts first, instead of trying to get the spiritual truth first.
The way to read the Bible is to realize that a great many statements in Scripture that appear factual actually are not. Literalism as one's first assumption does violence to the narrative. What Pageau has done is provide the symbolism missing from most western church reading of the Bible. Sadly, very few people are even aware of his book. Further, could we bring it to their attention, I feel certain the vast majority would reject it.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
"Shem the heart of the word" -- Did you mean to say "world" here?
By the way, I've been seeing this painting of Noah and his sons a lot in a video series I've been watching. I rather like it:
https://www.learnreligions.com/sons-of-noah-701191
CatRez
Good catch; fixed now. The clothing is a little odd, but the image is not bad.
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