mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) (05/13/91)
In article <May.10.03.11.38.1991.6564@athos.rutgers.edu>, tblake@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Thomas Blake) cites Matthew > 11 Jesus answered, "This teaching does not apply to everyone, but only > to those who God has given it. 12 For there are different reasons why > men cannot marry: some, because they were born that way; others because > men made them that way; and others do not marry for the sake of the > Kingdom of heaven. Let him who can accept this teaching do so." > (TEV) But the original doesn't say anything about marriage, at least not directly. A more accurate translation of verse 12 is: "There are eunuchs born that way from their mother's womb, there are eunuchs made so by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can." [Jerusalem Bible] The last sentence is a bit more lapidary (and obscure!) in the original: _Ho dynamenos cho:rein cho:reito_ That means, literally, "let one able to make room (or advance) make room." It is arguable that Matthew has done just that -- taken an isolated and "difficult" saying of Jesus and tied it to the specific teaching on divorce. Maybe this was a saying that might otherwise have dropped out of our tradi- tion, just becuase of its near total obscurity in isolation. (It is obvious from comparing Matthew and Luke, especially in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, that Matthew will "compose" together material that was not juxtaposed in his sources; there is nothing wrong with that, and Matthew usually has a good point to make by doing so.) But the fact is that _eunuchos_ doesn't refer to marriage -- the word is etymologically something like "bed-keeper" or in a more modern phrase, "harem-guard" -- and specifically refers to the lack of functioning mature sexual apparatus that "qualifies" such people for the office of chamberlin. It is indeed the case that the last clause of the three on eunuchs, that there are eunuchs who have *made themselves such* for the kindgom of heaven, has been used from very early on to encourage celibacy *for those able to accept it.* Before going on to my own reflections on this passage, let me cite the notes in W.F.Albright and C.S.Mann's volume on Matthew in the Anchor Bible; this is from pp. 226-7: 11. "Not all men can accept this." Placed where it is, this reply of Jesus is not at all clear. The Greek ... may refer to the following vs. 12, in which case Jesus would seem to be exalting the celibate state as opposed to the married state... Alternatively, "this" may refer to the teaching given on divorce in vss. 4-9, in which case this saying will refer to those unwilling to accept the stricter marriage law of the Messianic Community, and "only those to whom it is granted" will refer to those called by God into that Community... It is also possible that the contents of vss. 11-12 are an independent saying which remains obscure... 12. In the light of what has been said, it is possible that the saying in this verse has been attracted to its present context as being loosely associated with a discussion on marriage. In reality only two classes of men are being described here -- those physically in- capable of marriage, either from birth or from being rendered so by others, and those who while at one time physically capable of marriage have renounced that state either by self-mutilation or voluntary celi- bacy. Frankly, I think that this "analysis" rides rough-shod over the triple class- ification made by Jesus in his saying. I don't disagree that the major POINT of the saying is, parabolically, to commend celibacy to those who can "make themselves eunuchs" in some non-literal sense. However, some of the richness that Jesus packed into the saying -- or that at least a gentile Greco-Roman audience would have read in it -- seems to have been lost on Albright & Mann, who want to lump into ONE class the TWO very distinct ones of "eunuch from birth" and "eunuch made so by men" and even worse wish to divide the single class of those who "make themselves eunuchs" into two, one of which is not literally describable as eunuchs at all. ASSUMING that Jesus meant to commend celibacy, voluntarily entered into and without self-mutilation, then the third class implies what we now think of as celibacy only by a shocking and paradoxical challenge. That is to say, if we accept the traditional teaching of the Church on this (as I mostly would), then Albright & Mann's category of "voluntary celibacy" emerges only after interpretation discards the literal meaning of Jesus' saying. One futher note from Albright & Mann: The attitude of the Christian Church to self-mutilation was in the early centuries ambivalent, and though one prominent theologian (Origen, third century) was self-castrated, such a state was a per- manent barrier to the ministry. OK. Proceeding then with a presumption that Jesus *intended* to teach a non- literal "become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" by this saying (we will see shortly one reason the Church may have disallowed literal eunuch priests) there is still good reason to look more closely at what Jesus actually SAID. I think most moderns are too disturbed (or perhaps in minority cases too much titillated) by the idea of eunuchs to notice some rather startling implications of the statement (quite aside from the main point I've assumed) 1. "There are eunuchs born that way from their mother's womb" This is the single most startling part of the saying. Jesus is explicitly recognizing that Genesis 1:27 ("male and female he created them") is NOT to be read as an exhaustive and exclusionary statement of sexual roles. Jesus acknowledges that some people are simply not BORN in the standard gender dichotomy. This is not all that rare, though it tends to be ignored in "polite" company, as disagreeing with our precious human categories. Jesus simply notes it as a fact of life. 2. "There are eunuchs made so by men" -- the type case that everyone would know about (and common until about a century ago, wherever there was both polygamy and slavery). The Greek reaction to this was much the same as ours (Herodotos has an "atrocity" story about the tyrant of Corinth kidnapping Corcyran boys -- sons of an opposition party -- and sending them to Persia). I suspect Jesus' audience had a somewhat different (though also negative) attitude towards this practice. The last eunuchs of imperial China died a few years ago, and they have told the tale: for a poor but ambitious family, castration of a boy was maybe the ONLY way to "enter the kingdom" of power at the imperial court. Eunuch functionaries certainly existed in the Davidic kingdoms, and I suspect also at the Herodian court. A Galileean audience might have had some of this same kind of "tough politics" attitude. In any case, this sets up both the reactions -- difficult/disturbing on the one hand but a vehicle for appearing at the court of the King on the other -- for the conclusive third clause, where Jesus heightens the point to its climax. 3. "There are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the kingdom of heaven." Again, I don't know whether Jesus and his audience would have the same "take" on this as would the early gentile church. The Greco-Roman reader is CERTAIN to have thought of the priests of Cybele, who castrated themselves in frenzy in rites that spread throughout the Mediterranean from an Anatolian homeland. The (related) cult of Attis was certainly known in Jerusalem in Isaiah's day. Admitting that I am uncertain here, I nonetheless suggest that Jesus *is* relying on a parallel between the priests of Cybele, who at least THINK they are making themselves eunuchs for their salvation and those whose ambitions (or those of their families that they could not resist, or at least the ambitions of the slave-traders) placed eunuchs at the royal courts. Jesus will indeed have trusted his audience not to take him as praising the cults of the gentiles -- though he is ever ready to point out to reluctant hearers that the gentiles are quite willing to treat their children lovingly, or to return good for good, evil for evil: all the commonplaces of smug morality. It is surely PART of the reason the early church forbade eunuch priests that it wished to be VERY clear that its priesthood was not a variant on that of the Anatolian goddess. (And even the self-castration for personal purity might be taken as suspicious on the same grounds.) Whether he was urging a merely metaphorical or a literal eunuchizing on his listeners I am uncertain -- there is after all that OTHER saying, "If your right hand offend you, cut it off" -- but Jesus' words are always a sharp knife (and one should take care in applying them to bodily parts.) One last comment. Albright and Mann have yet another strange assumption; they take it as obvious that a castrated man is "incapable" of marriage. (And that may conceviably be true in Jewish law, though I don't have any reference on hand to confrim that.) I should point out that such a view EQUATES "marriage" and copulatory sex, or possibly "reproductive" sex (as there are classical jokes about the activities of the priests of Cybele!) This is a strange point of view. There is no reason I know of why a eunuch male could not marry a woman. Jewish context may suggest otherwise, and it is that context that inclines Matthew to bring the saying on eunuchs next to the ruling on divorce. But why should a man "born a eunuch" and needing hormone treatments to attain sexual maturity (or even one who declines to have such treatments) be forbidden to marry? There seems to be some confusion here, between two different -- if often overlapping -- divine institutions: being fruitful and multiplying (which of course is applicable to beasts that do NOT have marriage) and having a helpmate with whom one joins one life. -- Michael L. Siemon "O stand, stand at the window, m.siemon@ATT.COM As the tears scald and start; ...!att!attunix!mls You shall love your crooked neighbor standard disclaimer With your crooked heart."