#border lines

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One of the things that struck me as interesting about this week’s reading is its connection to The Slayers of Moses by Susan A. Handelman.  One of the things that Boyarin talks about is how heresy is a concept that became necessary in order to distinguish between Christianity and Judaism, and the process of creating the idea of heresy created a religion.  In other words, Christianity is a religion, whereas Judaism isn’t (or both is and isn’t, as Boyarin sometimes talks about).  To describe this building of a religion, Boyarin uses many interesting phrases to describe how it came about.  For instance, on page 11, he describes it as “religion’s disembedding.”  On the next page, he says, “In other words, when Christianity separated religious belief and practice from Romanitas, cult from culture, Judaism as a religion came into the world.”  The idea of “disembedding,” and the idea of “separating religious belief and practice,” remind me very much of when Handelman discusses the kind of - one might call it - disembedding of the metaphor, from the word.  That is, she talks about how there is a fundamental metaphoricity of words for Rabbinic thought that Greek thought literalizes (page 29 of The Slayers of Moses).  Though Boyarin isn’t talking about words, he is talking about a separation of belief and practice, whereas practice was once inherently belief; likewise, Handelman is talking about how Aristotle “reoriented the forms of being to the forms of assertion...” (7).  So, according to Boyarin, doing was once believing, and then Christianity comes along and separates doing from belief.  Likewise, the word was being, and then Aristotle came along and separated being and assertion towards being.  It’s interesting to me that two forms of separation are taking place. One other thing that I wanted to add has to do with how amazing it was to me that Boyarin brings up the importance of heresy in terms of being the item that arrives in order for Christianity to distinguish itself from Judaism.  I had never thought of heresy that way before.  That is, perhaps, because the idea of making divisions seems so innocuous at first, and there is a kind of horror at the realization that something that was created to understand where certain divisions begin and end becomes such a monster later on.  In any case, it reminds me of a kind of reverse sexuation graph, where - instead of desiring to see the similarities of oneself in another - one desires to see all the items that are not remotely connected to one in another (no semblance of oneself).  As Boyarin describes, crucifying the Logos - giving it up to the Christians - creates “a perfect mirror in which the Rabbis construct (as it were) Christianity, while the Christian writers, such as Justin, construct (as it were) Judaism” (31).  There is a potential mutual desire to create these divisions; though, this is of course only necessary because they share so many similarities.  And this is, perhaps, why something so huge, such as splitting belief and practice, has to occur - because they share too many similarities.  If there has to be SOME SORT of difference, any sort of difference, when dealing with something so similar, then a radical change in the understanding of belief (or word) has to take place.

In our discussion of the history of rhetoric, we've seen similar border lines being drawn, in order to legitimize the practice as its own science, distinct from other disciplines or natural abilities. Quintilian, Aristotle, and Plato's dialogues all address those niggling queries that call into question rhetoric's legitimacy: 'What is rhetoric the study of?' 'What is the content of your discipline?' 'How do you teach something like that?' 'What's the point of teaching when anyone can do it?' and so on. Much the way Boyarin talks about Judaism having the appellation of 'religion' thrust upon it and having to establish a separate orthodoxy to identify itself, we've seen rhetoricians have to explain their practice in terms of more 'established' sciences to be taken seriously. The idea that rhetoric is supposed to teach virtue is something these ancient rhetoricians seem to have thrust upon them, to forcibly distance themselves from the 'heretical' practice of rhetoric to persuade with lies that predates the 'orthodoxy.' In Aristotle's treatise, he outlines and categorizes the proper, orthodox approach to rhetoric, yet appropriates for it philosophical logic and judicial procedure, as well as the turns of speech and emotional appeals that the 'heretics' are misusing. Likewise, Quintilian establishes that in order to create the ideal orators, rhetorical studies should be taken back from the grammarians and only taught separately by those who are qualified to call themselves orators. Even today, the issue of rhetoric losing its individual identity is linked to being subsumed and appropriated by other disciplines in writing and philosophy. For rhetoric, the border lines have all but disappeared. But through reading Boyarin's analysis of Christianity and Judaism, it makes one wonder where the lines were to begin with, and if they were necessary.

(via Border Lines by L.E. Fitzpatrick Blog Tour)

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