… something New

  • Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses (P.S.)I’ve been mak­ing my way through “Walk­ing the Bible: a Jour­ney by Land through the Five Books of Moses” by Bruce Feller. This book is aptly titled. To read the book by this lapsed Jew­ish scholar who has found him­self drawn more and more to recon­sider the Bible he put aside long ago feels like tak­ing his pil­grim­age with him. He is trav­el­ing with dif­fer­ent author­i­ties and his­to­ri­ans, and his reflec­tions on what he sees as they go from one loca­tion to another is by turns won­der­ing, med­i­ta­tive, curi­ous … but I appre­ci­ate that he doesn’t try to rush to any con­clu­sions for him­self or his read­ers. (And per­haps his view­ers. There’s a burst on the book that says “The com­pan­ion to the PBS tele­vi­sion series,” but I never remem­ber hear­ing about it.)

    And so I was delighted today to read what he had to say about an orthros ser­vice that he attended at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.

    By the time I arrived in the chapel it was just after 4:30, and the morn­ing ser­vice was under way. The basil­ica was still dark, except for some can­dles above a lectern, where a monk in thick, black robes was chant­ing a prayer in Byzan­tine Greek … Grad­u­ally with the glow of the light, like liq­uid apri­cot, the dimen­sions of the room became apparent.

    The basil­ica, built between 542 and 551 C.E.* is small, designed for the monks, not for the masses. The gran­ite walls and pil­lars are orig­i­nal, as are the cypress doors and ceil­ing. The expan­sive mosaic above the apse depict­ing the Trans­figua­tion of Jesus, flanked by Moses and Eli­jah, is one of only three sur­viv­ing Byzan­tine mosaics in the world. The lav­ish high­light and by far the dom­i­nant archi­tec­tural fea­ture of the room is a lav­ish floor-to-ceiling wooden iconos­ta­sis, built in the sev­en­teenth cen­tury,… Alto­gether, with the scar­let robes on the icons, the green on the ceil­ing, and the gold on the iconos­ta­sis, the chapel looks like a walk­ing ver­sion of one of those gilded medieval trip­tychs that fill Euro­pean muse­ums: one part ped­a­gog­i­cal tool, one part inspi­ra­tional mes­sage, one part awe­some dis­play of wealth.

    The ser­vice moved at a mea­sured tempo. A monk would step for­ward to a lectern, … turn up the flame on an oil lamp, and read a few pas­sages from the text. He would back away and another monk would step for­ward. Occa­sion­ally, there would be a call and response … Holy! Holy! Holy! Hal­lelu­jah! Hal­lelu­jah! There was not a wasted ges­ture. As one lectern was tem­porar­ily rolled away, another was pulled for­ward. As one book closed, another opened. The pace was steady, rhyth­mic, mes­mer­iz­ing. In a way, the ser­vice reminded me of the pyra­mids in that it was per­fectly bal­anced, reas­sur­ing in its pro­por­tions, and com­pletely devoid of time. A “liv­ing tra­di­tion,” as the monks like to say….

    In time, the sheer power of the tempo — and the ded­i­ca­tion of those who car­ried it — began to feel almost over­whelm­ing. How many reli­gious cer­e­monies had I attended in my life? How many rites and rit­u­als and prayers and bene­dic­tions? This was one of the most pow­er­ful dis­plays of faith I had ever seen, yet also the least osten­ta­tious. I did a small cal­cu­la­tion. … Extended back in an unbro­ken line to the sixth cen­tury, this sanc­tu­ary had hosted almost three mil­lion ser­vices — all in the same place, in the same lan­guage, in the same man­ner. A liv­ing tra­di­tion, indeed.

    * C.E. = Com­mon Era. Together with B.C.E. — Before the Com­mon Era — they cor­re­spond to the dat­ing con­ven­tions of A.D. and B.C. respec­tively, and are a non-Christian’s answer to the appar­ently egre­gious evan­gel­i­cal pro­pa­ganda of divid­ing his­tory at more or less the birth-year of Christ. The author uses B.C.E. and C.E. through­out the book, and they bother me every time, but I may just be being peevish.


    Related posts:

    1. “Lord, have mercy”, cont.
    2. Pascha on the porch
    3. “The 6,000 Beards of Mt. Athos” by Ralph H. Brewster

    August 3rd, 2006 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 08.03.2006

    I have this in my “to read” pile, but I’ve not got­ten to it yet. It sounds lovely.

  • Grace

    Well, I get the impres­sion that you go through about a library-full a month, so I’m sure you’ll get there. It’s a good can­di­date for an occa­sional read, because the chap­ters are bro­ken down into 1–3 page self-contained por­tions. So I’ve really been just tool­ing along for months with this, and I’m only halfway through.

  • Mimi

    Well, I get the impres­sion that you go through about a library-full a month, so I’m sure you’ll get there. bwa­ha­ha­haa­hah­haa­haha. Thanks! I’ll get there, God will­ing and the creeks don’t rise ;)

  • This Side of Glory » Blog Archive » Lessons from Exo­dus about Egypt

    […] Why didn’t I think of that? Bruce Feiler, the author of “Walk­ing Through the Bible”** found “6 Lessons from the Bible for Egypt Today.” […]

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