[Previous: lines 725-792]
After saving the life of the woman taken in adultery, Jesus now addresses his followers.
Talia dein socios fatur conversus ad ipsos:------------
“Heu durum genus! haud possunt desistere victi.
Nil linquunt intentatum, nil prorsus inausum. [795]
Nempe ego nunc festis, fas contra et jura, diebus,
affero opem invalidis, aegrosque in pristina reddo:
nunc sontes, et sponte sua commissa fatentes,
accipio, noxaque animos et crimine solvo.
Nunc socii fruges tractant et vina, priusquam [800]
dent manibus lymphas, cùm victu corpora curant,
nec dapibus parcunt, et quae in nos plurima iactant.
Quinetiam me fraude petunt furta irrita adorti:
vel cùm Romanis astu me opponere tentant
incautum, quaeruntque dolo, an fas pendere regi [805]
per capita argentum, edicto quod quisque iubetur.
Nec caecos mea facta movent ingentia, quae non
humanis fierent opibus, non artibus ullis:
nec qua vi haec agitem spoliati lumine cernunt;
consiliisque audent supremi obstare Parentis. [810]
Nec priscos tollo ritus, legesve refigo:
quippe alia arcanis longè sententia dictis
indeprensa latet; longè altera sacra teguntur
nube sub obscura verborum. Ut cœtera mittam,
quid suis horretis vetitis imponere mensis [815]
viscera? non animis labem sublimibus affert,
aut his, aut illis ieiunia solvere rebus.
Vobis intus obest mens ipsa , et dira cupido.
Sed quoniam gaudet cœno immundaque palude
setigerum genus, et pecori huic innata libido est; [820]
in sue adumbrantur veneris mala gaudia fœdae.
Quinetiam, ut iussis animos cœlestibus auctor
paulatim assuescens posset mollire colendo,
nec nulla inciperet sub relligione tenere
indociles primùm populos, obtusaque gentis [825]
pectora, iussit oves iugulare, et sanguine terram
imbuere, immeritosque aris mactare iuvencos:
quae tamen omnia erant, sicui mens alta vigebat,
venturae speculum mox relligionis et umbra.”
And after this he addressed his disciples:------------
“Oh, men are hard! Even in defeat they persist.
There’s nothing they won’t try, nothing they won’t dare. [795]
It’s true: I work sabbath days, contrary to law,
curing invalids and returning the sick to health:—
those who have sinned, and who confess the fact?
I accept them—and purge their souls of sin.
My followers handle fruit and wine before [800]
washing their hands, they fill themselves with food,
all kinds of meat, and do other things beside.
Really they want to kill me, spreading these lies
or they try to entangle me with the Romans
by trickery, asking whether we should pay [805]
money out in tax, an edict we must all follow.
They’re blind to my miracles, which are equally
impossible by human or magic explanation:
They do not see the light, my power, and dare
to obstruct the plans of the Supreme Father. [810]
I don’t abolish the ancient rites or annul
the laws: but those obscure sayings have
a hidden meaning; quite different rites lie
beneath this fog of words. All else aside,
why does the idea of eating forbidden meats [815]
so horrify them? Our sublime souls are not touched
by this or that means of satisfying hunger.
What harms us is our own spirit's dire desires.
That a bristly boar delights wallowing
in swampy mud, that its heart is lustful; [820]
means the pig shadows forth our foulest delights.
So, the Heavenly Father, to tame our souls,
to accustom us to the proper objects of worship,
and divine commandments, and to soften
the intractable hearts of an obtuse, primitive [825]
people ordered, first, that sheep blood be spilled,
on the earth, and innocent cows killed at the altar:
but a lively mind would grasp that these are only
foreshadows, religion seen through a dark glass.”
Vida has here retrofitted the (later) Pauline loosening of Jewish dietary laws, and put the instruction directly into Jesus’s mouth—eat all the pork you like, it’s the things of the spirit, not of the body, that defile us. It's anachronistic and, worse, reads like a kind of gentile special pleading, but fair enough. In fact this whole passage is a sort of transition-scene: from the drama of the woman taken in adultery, and leading into Christ's transfiguration on Mount Tabor, which is coming up next.
That said, and without wishing to enter the thorny wood dense with rebarbative theological speculation, I'm struck that there's something a bit ... odd, shall we say, about the placement of this little sermon. It's about, fundamentally, appetite and purity. Jesus is saying: a merely material approach (following certain in-the-world rules and laws, say; or refusing to eat certain deemed-unclean foods) do not address the real issue: purity is a spiritual, not a merely worldly, business. It seems a little awkward to me that this follows hard on the heels of the pericope adulterae, especially since Vida spins that incident—or, if spins is unfair, then certainly fleshes out John's gospel with some imagined details—as a case of a beautiful and spirited young girl married against her will to a disgusting old-man-steptoe type. Who would blame such a person for fooling around with a younger lover? Or to put it another way: the pericope adulterae stands in a kind of structural relationship (near the end, but not the climax) with the earlier incident (near the beginning, but not the opening) in which Christ, in the House of Simon at Bethany, casts out a seven-headed demon of lust from the body of a young woman who had been having lots of promiscuous sex. Is the poem proposing two different models of sexual transgression? One is a matter of spiritual delinquency, like Magdalene in Simon's house; the other is, really, no worse than eating pork or omitting to wash one's hands before handling fruit. Or am I misreading Vida? I daresay I am. At the very least I have to say the comparison with the bristly boar at the end strikes a strange note: the pig bodies forth the laziness, gluttony and lust to which people can succumb; it is, in many ways, unclean. But it's OK to eat it? Hmm.
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