Deprepucation blues

January 31, 2013
Deprepucation blues

Luke 2:21-24 needs an exceptionally experienced, skillful, and paranoid exeisorcist (See "Definitions," January 8.), one that can find demons that may or may not be there – in the passage, in himself.

The circumcision demon:

          Why are the Jews lopping off the heads of their hammers? Because God told Abraham to do his. (Genesis 17:9ff.) God also told him to take the head off his son Isaac; but in the case of the boy God stayed Abraham’s hand, in the case of the buoy, not so much.

          Of course, if you can somehow convince others to be mean to their own ends  . . . .  See Genesis 34:13-29, the defeat of Hamar and Schechem and all of their house “on the third day, when they were quite sore” by just two of Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, who “took their swords and . . . killed them all.” (34:25)

The naming demon. 

          Like good Muslims, Mary and Joseph submit and name the boy ’Ihsou~v – what the angel said: “Don’t be afraid. Good news. You’re going to be pregnant, if you’re not already. It’s a boy, Jesus. That’s what you’re going to call him. The next David.” Every Jewish mother’s dream, “the next David.” 

          Mary does have one fair question: how? “You know I’m not sexually active. And if I were, I’d take precautions.”

          “One:” the angel says, “no matter;  and two: no precaution against this. Zeus and Danäe?”

            Mary remembers. One of her cousins had a reproduction of the Jan Gossaert painting in her bedroom. (We don’t have it on the blog, because my mother disapproves, but click here. It looks peaceful. Danäe looks lovely, both unrumpled and ecstatic.  “Okay,” Mary says.  And she submits. Nor in her unrumpled ecstasy does she forget the name.  And Joseph agrees, because the angel of God has said so.  “And at the end of eight days, when he was peritome’ed [pron. peri-tomayed], he was called Jesus.”

The purification-business demon. 

          This has to do with Levitical law.  (Leviticus 12:2-8)  But what does it have to do with Mary and Baby Jesus.  Mary was only “with” the Spirit.  She delivers The Airy Christ, according to the Proto-evangelium of James, without so much as the slightest tear.  He is all baby, no blood.  So there is no need for purification, to lop off (this time) the heads of pigeons.

          Then, why would any of them want to take part in the baptism.  (See January 9.)

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