Abraham’s Donkey
Reality within the Text
Behind the Text
And in front of the Text
2022 Partial Edition
Aurel Ionica
Copyright © 2021 by Aurel Ionica
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
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Contents
1–Reality, Language, and Reality Blockers ........................................................ 1
2–Reality Blockers, Sexual Language, and Reasoned Reality .......................19
3–Reasoned Reality in the Garden of Eden ...................................................95
4–The Irrationality of Sin ................................................................................229
5–Reasoned Reality of Good And Reasoned Reality of Power ..................251
6–Demythologizing Mythology .....................................................................323
7–The Tower of Evil .........................................................................................629
8–The Lot of Abraham and the Lot of Lot ....................................................923
9–The Fights of the Lord and the Fights of the Ladies ................................973
10–From the Garden of Eden to Canaan via Harry Potter .......................1077
11–From Slavery Back to Slavery: The Most Misread Book .....................1477
12–The Spoiled New Wine (Forthcoming) .........................................................
13–Bibliography .............................................................................................1853
14–Subject Index ...........................................................................................1863
15–Bible Index ...............................................................................................1973
Reality, Language, and Reality Blockers
It is widely recognized that even the most objective interpretation of a text is based
on some underlying assumptions which are rarely acknowledged, let alone discussed. Among these, I will argue that the most important one is how reality is
understood. To be more specific, it is assumed that modern scholars have a sound
understanding of reality—both in terms of what it is and how to describe it—
while ancient people had a naive understanding of reality, usually referred to as
mythical thinking. As a result, ancient texts are virtually unintelligible to modern
readers therefore modern scholars see their task to translate them into modern
categories. That ancient writers may have had a better and a more accurate understanding of reality compared to which modern scholarly understanding might
seem simplistic or even narrow-minded probably scholars would find offensive.
The following studies, however, take seriously the possibility of such a ridiculous
idea. In order to compare the way in which reality was understood by ancient
people and the way in which it is understood by modern scholars I will resort to
some ancient texts as well as modern interpretations of them.
Reality has to do with what exists and is conveyed by the verb to be. Because reality
is such a fundamental and universal concept, this verb is probably the most pervasive word in all languages. Being so common, its meaning seems self-evident:
to be or to exist means to be out there as an object of investigation for everyone
to perceive. This form of existence is often referred to as objective existence, and
is used to distinguish the objects that exist out there in reality and not just in the
imagination of some subject that are not available to everyone to perceive. Because
of its independence of any subject, objective reality has received special attention
from philosophical reflection as a result of its supposed epistemological function:
it has the potential to provide knowledge about the world that can be verified and
therefore can be universally accepted as normative. It is widely believed that the
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ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
concept of objective reality has laid the foundation for scientific research, the only
reality that science recognizes and is able to investigate.
In dealing with events of the past, however, the concept of objective reality no
longer uses the word is but rather was, or happened. Again, to distinguish things
that were out there or happened out there so that anyone would have been able
to observe from those which were just imagined, the objective reality resorts to
the qualifier really: really was, or really happened. This distinction is important
because only events that actually belong to objective reality properly qualify to
provide reliable and valid historical knowledge.
The concept of objective reality without a doubt has a major epistemological significance and there is no surprise that for a long time it seemed to be the only
form of reality that can properly be identified as such, indeed, that can be properly
conceived. The existence of the object, however, is not the only form of existence
possible or important. Another form of existence is that of the subject, that is, of
the one who is aware of the existence of things as objects of investigation. While
subjects share the same kind of objective existence with the objects of their investigation in the sense of being objects of investigation of other subjects—including
themselves—their existence is different from the existence of the objects of their
investigation in an important way. While the existence of objects which are out
there can be viewed as fixed because they have no control over whether they exist
or not or whether they are the way they are and not different—indeed, not even
being aware that they exist at all—the existence of a subject who is aware of its
own existence is something open. What I am is different from the way in which
the chair on which I am sitting is because my existence is not fixed. The chair can
only be what it is and if it becomes something else is because other outside factors
have caused the chair to turn into something else. Although it is true that human
existence can be modified by external agents just as the existence of a chair can, for
human existence the human subject is usually also a deciding agent. I say usually
and not always because sometimes humans allow their existence to be completely
shaped by outside factors without their own input so that it becomes very similar
to that of an object, and when that happens, that existence is no longer considered
an authentic subject existence, as Kierkegaard would say. What I am right now and
what I am doing right now is the result of many choices which I have made over
a long period of time as well as decisions taken by others, including factors that
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Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
were beyond my control. Moreover, while the chair on which I am sitting right
now can only be what it is, I could be something very different from what I am
right now if I want to. What makes human existence real or authentic is precisely
the potential of being something else. The ability of the subjects not only to be
aware of the existence of other objects but also of the extent of the unfulfilled potentiality of their own existence makes their existence special and different from
any other object.
Once the existence of the subject is recognized, another form of existence for the
object can be identified. While the objective existence defines the existence of an
object independent of any subject, the same existence can be very different when
viewed from the point of view of a certain subject or of a category of subjects. This
kind of existence or reality which is created or decided by subjects has escaped
philosophical reflection and as a result is alien to modern thinking; therefore, I
will label it at this point reasoned reality. In other words, to some extent objects
are not what they are in themselves, but what subjects decide or share a reason for
their existence. Subjects are able to create such a reality as a result of their ability
to think or reason and communicate through language what they think. Because
the reasoned reality is accomplished by the subjects through language, the study
of this kind of reality needs to be done also in language and not necessarily how
objects are in the world.
In order to illustrate that the reasoned reality is both real and different from the
objective reality I would like to use the notion of real estate. As its name implies,
real estate refers to values which are objectively out there and are real so that
anyone can see and evaluate. That the value of real estate is something objective
seems to be proved by the fact that various professional evaluators would assign
surprisingly similar value to the same piece of property although the evaluation
is done independently. In spite of this, the value of real estate is not as real and as
objective as it may seem. If one compares two pieces of property—identical from
all points of view—but one from a good or rich neighborhood and one from a
poor one, the values of the two pieces of property would be substantially different
regardless of how many evaluators calculate the value of the estate. Similarly, if
one decides to build two houses using the same contractor, identical blueprints,
identical materials, and on identical lots, but one in a good neighborhood and one
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in a poor one, the two apparently identical houses would have substantially different values no matter how many evaluators do the evaluation. In a sense, things are
not what they are in themselves, but what humans want them to be. Strange as it
may seem, if enough people agree that the value of a discarded piece of paper or
a used piece of underwear is worth millions of dollars, it will sell for that amount.
What enables us to place extreme value on some objects and consider others to be
worthless is our ability through language to agree on what is important.
Without denying that the difference between modernism and postmodernism
involves quite different methodological procedures, I will argue that the major
change has happened in the way reality is understood, and therefore when the text
is analyzed from that perspective, the methodological procedures specific to modern and postmodern scholarship not only are better clarified, but they no longer
appear as unrelated and mutually exclusive. Moreover, the concept of reality allows for insights into the meaning of the text which is not available in any current
method of interpretation. In order to illustrate this, I will look at the story found
in Genesis 22:1–19 about the sacrifice of Isaac from both the historical-critical
and from the postmodernist perspectives.
The story about Abraham’ s attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac belongs to a larger
circle of stories about the patriarchs. From the historical-critical perspective such
stories are notoriously difficult because their historicity is virtually impossible to
establish as a result of the distance in time between the moment when they were
written down and when the related events are supposed to have happened. Even if
one assumes that Genesis was written down by Moses who lived at the time when
the Bible claims that he lived, there would still be hundreds of years between when
Abraham supposedly attempted to sacrifice his son and when the story was written down for the first time. From the historical-critical perspective, to establish
what really happened by using this story is quite a formidable task. The accuracy of
the text is further undermined by the inconsistency in using the divine names. For
instance, in the first part of the story God is referred to as Elohim, while in the end
of the story God is referred to as Yahweh. Because of this inconsistency scholars
have concluded that the story is a composite of materials coming from two sources: one from an Elohistic source—usually referred to as the E source—and one
from an Yahwist source—usually referred to as J from Jahweh and considered to
be earlier than E. Because the story is assumed to come from the Elohistic source,
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Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
we have a strange situation in which in a later story material from an earlier source
is interpolated. Comments like the following are typical for Bible commentaries:
“The story, except for vv. 15–18 and a few minor additions, is from E. It is one of
the most beautifully told and most moving of the stories in Genesis, and indicates
that E, at his best, is artistically on a level with J2.”1 Because the story is so distant
from the events it purports to relate, it does not refer necessarily to the people it
describes, indeed, even the places it mentions: “If the legend be very ancient, there
is no certainty that the place was in the Holy Land at all. Any extensive mountainous region, well known at the time, and with a lingering tradition of human
sacrifice, would satisfy the conditions.”2 As far as the reality behind the story is
concerned, this is what a historical-critical scholar would speculate: “The primary
intent of the tale was presumably to explain why it was that human sacrifice was
no longer offered at the sanctuary at which it was told. In E it has a deeper significance: human sacrifice has no place in the worship of the Lord the God of Israel.”3
Gunkel makes the interesting suggestion that the reality behind the patriarchal
narrative is later than the reality behind the Jephthah’ s narrative which, as one
may remember, occurs during the time of judges: “Accordingly, the Jephthah narrative is harsher and more ancient, Gen 22 softer and more modern. Indeed, the
narrator knows that, in the final analysis, God does not desire this sacrifice. But
the legend still reckons with the possibility that God could require it.”4 Because
of the nature of the sources, the recovery of the reality behind most of the biblical
narratives is a virtually hopeless enterprise.
While postmodernist scholars would not deny that the biblical narratives are distant in time from the events that they are supposed to relate, they are not interested
in recovering the reality behind the text as the historical-critical scholars do, but
rather they want to deal with the text as it is. Because they insist on analyzing the
text as it has come down to us, such approaches are usually referred to as literary
approaches. The term is unfortunate because it obscures the fact that stories still
1
George Arthur Buttrick et al., eds., The Interpreter’ s Bible: The Holy Scriptures in the King
James and Revised Standard Versions with General Articles and Introduction, Exegesis, Exposition
for Each Book of the Bible, 7 vols. (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952), 1:642.
2
John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1930), 329.
3
Buttrick, Interpreter’ s Bible, 1:645.
4
Hermann Gunkel, Genesis, trans. Mark E. Biddle, foreword Ernest W. Nicholson (Macon,
Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997), 237.
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have to do with reality and not necessarily with fiction as the word literary may
suggest. Often postmodernist interpreters ignore or seem not even to be aware
that the text creates a reality of its own which can be quite different from the way
things really happened or usually happen. Indeed, sometimes the interpreter assumes the reality of the reader—which is variously called context, social location,
and so on—as the reality against which the text is interpreted, making the reality
within the text virtually irrelevant. This reality of the reader I would call reality
in front of the text because the reader, as the one who decides the meaning of the
text based on modern beliefs according to the postmodernist position, is on the
opposite side of the text than the historical events that are behind the text since any
text is later than the events described. While borrowing concepts and procedures
developed by literary approaches, my goal is not to illustrate such procedures—
the reader’ s familiarity with them is assumed—but rather to point out how reality
is constructed in the text and how that reality relates both to the historical reality
or the reality behind the text and the reality that readers and interpreters create for
the text and becomes a reality in front of the text that obscures the reality that the
text intends to convey.
The story begins: “After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom
you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering
on one of the mountains that I shall show you’ ” (Gen 22:1-2).5 The story is not
told either by God or by Abraham, but by what scholars refer to as the narrator.
Typically, narrators never introduce themselves and although narrators must have
been real persons, they differ from real persons in some respects. In our case, the
narrator seems to know what no person in real life would ever be able to: what
God tells Abraham apparently in a dream and that God has some kind of test in
mind. Narrators which claim to know what no one ever can are usually referred
to as omniscient narrators. This is, however, a misnomer. Although narrators may
claim to know what no one else can, it does not mean that they know everything.
While they may be quite knowledgeable in some respects, in others they are quite
ignorant. For instance, although our narrator knows what God tells Abraham and
is able to read God’ s mind, the narrator does not seem to know what the test is
supposed to be. Is God testing Abraham to see whether he would find the idea of
5
All Bible quotations are from New Revised Standard Version of the Bible Online unless otherwise indicated: http://www.devotions.net/bible/00bible.htm .
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Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
sacrificing his son repulsive and pass the test by becoming indignant and refuse to
comply, or is Abraham expected to try to bring the requested sacrifice and pass the
test in this way? Our narrator does not give us any clue about what the test is and
does not seem to have any. Similarly, another aspect about which narrators are
notoriously ignorant is how their own story ends. Our narrator provides us with
no clue as to how the story ends and has to wait like any of us for the end of the
story in order to find out. Regardless of whether God actually talked to Abraham
or not, what the beginning of the story tells us is not what can happen in the real
world but rather what happens quite often in the world of stories.
Then the narrator continues: “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his
donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the
wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that
God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far
away” (Gen 22:3–4). This description seems to be as life-like as one can get taking
into account the kind of culture in which Abraham is supposed to have lived and
commentators are quick to point out the factuality of such details:
Each successive moment in that seemingly interminable interval of time is
charged with drama that is all the more intense for not being spelled out: the saddling of the pack animal; the unarticulated orders to the servants; the splitting of
the wood for the sacrificial fire; the long, wordless trip to the spot from which the
chosen site can first be seen; the forced matter-of-factness of Abraham’ s parting
instructions to the attendants.6
At closer examination, however, what this part of the story seems to lack is precisely that “matter-of-factness.” First, we are told that Abraham saddled the donkey and in real life that action can only mean that someone is expected to ride the
donkey. Although there are four travelers, we have no idea for whom the saddle is
intended. Even if we rule out the two slaves, we are still left with two candidates:
Abraham and Isaac. Moreover, it would seem that Isaac is not the best candidate
because later on he takes over the burden of the donkey. Although Abraham remains the best candidate to ride the donkey—particularly taking into account his
old age—the text makes clear that he did not ride but rather “walked” (|el¢Yáw). Not
6
E. A. Speiser, Genesis, 2nd ed., The Anchor Bible 1 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978),
164.
7
ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
only do we not know who is supposed to ride the donkey, but even if someone
had wanted to, that could have hardly been possible. We learn from the story that
later on the load of the firewood was transferred onto Isaac’ s back, which would
imply that during the three-day journey the load must have been carried by the
donkey, which would have left virtually no room for any potential rider. Moreover,
in real life a saddle may be an appropriate means to accommodate a rider on a
donkey but not a load of firewood large enough to burn a human being. Another
fact mentioned in the story is that Abraham cut the firewood and that may seem
quite easy to understand, but not really easy for Abraham to do. According to the
larger story, Abraham was about one hundred years old when Isaac was born, and
taking into account that Isaac is strong enough to carry a sizable load of wood uphill on his back, we may conclude that he must have been at least in his late teens
at this time, if not past forty as some commentators suppose. If that is the case,
according to the narrative Abraham must be at least 120 years old if not past 140.
For such an old man to be able to cut a sizable load of dry wood with a bronze ax
would have been quite a task in real life even if he had had a chain saw. Further,
we are told that Abraham took with him two of his slaves, which again seems quite
life-like taking into account that the story takes place at a time when slavery was
quite common. But again, while in real life it was the slaves who did the hard work
of cutting wood and loading donkeys, in the narrative it is Abraham who is doing
the hard work while his “young” helpers (wyfrf(ºn) are busy watching. According to
what they do in narratives, scholars have identified various categories of characters: main characters, secondary characters, helpers, and so on. Although in real
life slaves help in some way, in our story they have done nothing except probably
watch Abraham sweat and run out of breath. As if realizing that we are puzzled
by why these slaves are in the story anyway, the narrator continues: “Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over
there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you’ ” (v. 5). Finally, the two
slaves get something to do: nothing. Abraham had spared these slaves of their
hard work because they had a very important job to do: to keep the left behind
donkey company. The reason the donkey needed company is explained in the
next verse: “Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son
Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So, the two of them walked on
together” (v. 6). Consequently, the slaves were necessary because the donkey was
going to be left behind. Fortunately, we are no longer puzzled by the presence of
the slaves in the story, but now we are even more puzzled by the saddled donkey
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Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
that no one has ridden anyway. In real life, carrying loads uphill was almost exclusively done by donkeys for which they seemed perfectly fit, but in our story the
donkey is discharged of its duty precisely when a donkey was needed and helpful
most and its job taken over by Isaac although there was nothing wrong with the
donkey while humans were notoriously unfit for such jobs. For humans to carry
loads uphill while donkeys were available defied anything one knew about how
things happened in real life. If the slaves and the donkey were intended to be helpers, they clearly do not help much. Therefore, I would call them dummy characters.
After leaving behind the dummy characters, we learn that Isaac was not really
dumb: “Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my
son.’ He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt
offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering,
my son.’ So, the two of them walked on together” (vv. 7–8). Again, that seems like
conversation between two persons who are quite in touch with reality when doing
something deadly serious, but something is again un-life-like. For Isaac to embark
on such a long journey and not raise any questions about the purpose of the journey for such a long time and in spite of such obvious clues is quite unreal. What
is even stranger is that Abraham—the initiator of the whole enterprise—does not
claim to have a clear understanding of how things will develop and admits his
ignorance as well. Although he does say that God “will provide” and that turns
out to be true, he seems so surprised that what he had said proved to be true that
he decided to use the phrase as a toponym (v. 14) which shows that at the time
when he spoke he had no idea how things would turn out. Although people may
end up doing something else than what they had planned, for Abraham and Isaac
to embark on such a long journey when so much was at stake hoping to find out
how things may turn out is not how people normally act in real life. In this story
not only do we have helping characters which do not do what in real life they are
supposed to, but even the main characters do not act like real people either.
Having reached this point, we need to address the obvious question: Why would
an omniscient narrator write such a weird story? Why not forget about the slaves
and the donkey and have Isaac carry the wood all the way to emphasize better his
ordeal? Since Abraham had to explain to Isaac that he was the sacrifice when he
placed him on the altar, why not provide that explanation to Isaac right from the
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ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
beginning or at least as soon as Isaac asked the question in order to better emphasize Isaac’ s acceptance to be sacrificed after having pondered over the question for
three days or at least for some time?
It is only when we look at reality as it is constructed in the text and at how it
departs from the reality as we know it that we are in the position to ask the proper questions about the meaning of the story. Of course, the narrator could have
simplified the story and made it more life-like, but the way in which the story
departs from real life provides important clues about the message. By constructing the story in this way, the narrator tells us that Abraham did not do what he
did because he did not have other options, but because he chose to do so. First,
Abraham could have flatly rejected God’ s request arguing that human sacrifices
were an abomination and, in his case, it would have made God’ s promise to him
impossible to be fulfilled. Or, he could have complied with the request, but carry
it out in ways that would have spared him of unnecessary pain. As the story makes
clear, he owned slaves and therefore he had the option to commission two of them
to carry out the sacrifice for him while he could have stayed home and be spared
of the ordeal just as he commissioned one of his slaves later on to find a wife for
the same Isaac (Gen 24). After all, God had not insisted that the sacrifice could not
have been performed by someone else. Although he could have delegated the job,
he did not. Further, although he had slaves who could have done the hard work
of cutting the wood and making all the preparations for the journey, he refused to
take any shortcuts and chose to do even what God had not asked for and he was
not supposed to. Similarly, he had the option to have the donkey carry the wood
all the way to the place of sacrifice, but he decided to have Isaac carry the wood
himself in order to point out that Isaac himself had the option of making his ordeal easier, but did not want to use that option either. And finally, Abraham was
willing to take the hard road while having quite a vague idea about what God was
up to instead of using God’ s vagueness and his ignorance as an excuse to reject
the request altogether.
And now we come to the issue of reality: Did it really happen? Did it really happen that Abraham was not only willing to do something painful, but to do it the
hard way? Did it really happen that as a result of his religious belief, he not only
was willing to give up something very dear to him, but to do it in the most painful way? Of course, it did! Not only it did happen on this occasion, but probably
10
Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
happened more than once. Not only it did happen to Abraham, but it happened to
many others as well. Such things happened not only in the reality of the story, but
they happen in the real world anywhere and all the time. And this is where the difference between historical reality and reasoned reality becomes important: while
historical reality deals with what happens once, reasoned reality deals with what
can happen all the time. While historical reality deals with what humans have little control over, reasoned reality has to do with what human choose to do. In order
to understand this, one needs to look neither at the reality behind the text, nor at
the text, but rather at the reality within the text. That the dummy characters were
present in the story only to emphasize Abraham’ s choices which he did not use is
proved by the way the story ends: “So Abraham returned to his young men, and
they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-sheba” (v.
19). Although the donkey is no longer crowded with the wood and is fitted with a
saddle, it is simply discarded and Abraham and his company preferred to “walk”
together (Uk:l¢Yáw) rather than ride the donkey, possibly by turns. According to how
the story ends, the slaves are retrieved on the way back home but the donkey is left
behind possibly still waiting to be claimed.
Or is it? Could it be that a story is not over when it is over? Most scholars see
stories as self-contained units without much connection with one another except
possibly in terms of similarity of plot. The concept of reality within a story enables
us to compare the reality within one story with the reality within another story
and determine to what extent stories share the same reality in spite of the linguistic or even religious differences just as the concept of objective reality allows for
different individuals to share the same room in spite of the fact that they may wear
different clothes, speak different languages, vote for a different party, and worship
different shrines. The bold question we should dare to ask is: Could it be that the
same reality which is found in the Abraham story we might find somewhere else?
Intrigued by this question I would like to turn to another story written in a different
language, from a different religion, and quite distant in time from the Abraham’ s
story and I admit that the starting clue in my inquiry has been the abandoned
donkey. The story in reality is four stories because it is found in all four Gospels:
Matt 21:1–11; Mark 11:1–10; Luke 19:28–38; and John 12:12–19. According to
the historical-critical thinking, such a wide attestation of a story with just minor
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ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
differences as far as details are concerned is a strong indication of its historicity
and therefore that it really happened. All four stories are placed at the beginning
of what is known as the Passion Narrative: the larger story that deals with Jesus’
final journey to Jerusalem that culminated with his crucifixion. Why would all
four gospel writers include such an insignificant detail as Jesus’ riding of a donkey
when he entered Jerusalem on his last journey if that is not a piece of historical detail which was faithfully preserved by the tradition and accurately remembered?
Although there are important differences among the stories as I will point out, the
consistent presence of the story in all four gospels points out to its historicity.
Although John’ s Gospel is not the shortest, his version of the story is: “Jesus found
a young donkey and sat on it” (12:14). The fact that Jesus found the donkey presupposes that someone must have lost it and to raise the question of whose donkey it must have been would probably be the most hopeless question one could
ask from the historical point of view. It is true that Abraham’ s donkey is probably the only donkey in the Bible which is lost, but to suggest that Jesus found
Abraham’ s donkey would invite ridicule particularly taking into account that the
donkey which Jesus found was “young.” It is true that we do not know how old
Abraham’ s donkey was, but taking into account the kind of labor it had been able
to do for three days it could have been anything but young. To suppose that donkeys can live for thousands of years and actually get younger defies anything we
know about donkeys in the real world and why should we stretch our imagination
and think of Abraham’ s donkey when we know that donkeys can get lost easily
when left unattended and lost animals are a constant occurrence in all cultures?
Although a lost donkey is still private property, using lost property and even appropriating it happens all the time and that can easily explain what Jesus did. It is
true that if this is how things really happened, it would raise questions about why
would Jesus seize unattended property without attempting to get in touch with
the owner, but some commentators solve the difficulty by suggesting that probably
Jesus left a disciple to notify the owner and then returned the donkey promptly.
As long as we know that ancient writers did not have our notion of accurate reporting and therefore were very careless about providing the proper details, we are
justified, indeed, responsible to fill in the necessary details guided by how things
must have happened. By explaining that Jesus must have left a disciple to notify
the owner and must have returned the donkey we do not feel that we depart from
the story but rather write it exactly as John himself would have written it if he had
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witnessed it with our notion of historical accuracy. After all, all reporting omits
information and details which are really there but are left out because are not
deemed important. The concept of how things must have actually happened helps
us to fill in the important details in order to make the story true as to how things
really must have happened.
At closer examination, however, the concept of how things must have really happened instead of being the solution turns out to be the problem. John tells us that
although the donkey was young, Jesus was able to sit on it and even to ride it.
Again, commentators come to the rescue of the narrator suggesting that this must
have been a miracle, and by definition, miracles are things that defy reality as we
know it. Although it is true that gospel writers do relate events which defy reality
as we know it, when they do so they make clear that they are dealing with a miracle and there is no suggestion in any of the four accounts about the donkey that
there was anything miraculous involved in finding the donkey and in riding it.
Although our notion of historical reporting helps us explain why ancient writers
left out important details that are necessary for us to make sense of the text, it does
not explain why the same narrators suddenly become so detail conscientious that
they include details that become stumbling blocks and prevent us from making
sense of the text. If this narrator is so taken up with the story that he forgets to tell
us that Jesus had asked permission to use the donkey and then returned it, why
wouldn’t the same narrator just forget about the age of the donkey and confuse us
with that detail even if the age of the donkey is historically accurate? It is as if John
is trying to make it hard for us to imagine how Jesus actually rode the donkey.
And what if that is exactly what he is trying to do? What if the real donkey which
Jesus used for travel and the only one for which our historical thinking allows is
precisely what John is trying to prevent us from thinking? That Jesus must have
owned a donkey or possibly several which he used for his constant and extensive travels we can be certain although the Gospels only mention Jesus’ means of
transportation on water but never on land. To actually think of Jesus without a
donkey is almost as unthinkable as to imagine a circuit rider Methodist preacher
in the 19th century without a horse. To imagine that Jesus traveled on foot all the
way to Jerusalem and decided to ride only when he entered the city makes as little
sense as to imagine a modern traveler who would walk for days to come to a city
and would rent a car only upon entering the city. What happened when Jesus ap-
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ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
proached Jerusalem was not that finally he discovered a donkey, but rather that his
burden carrying donkey was abandoned just as Abraham’ s wood-carrying donkey was left behind so that a new donkey took over. What distinguished the two
donkeys was not necessarily their physical identity but rather their function. The
traveling donkey is not mentioned and is not described because it is irrelevant just
as the clothes which Jesus wore on this occasion are not mentioned and are not
described although we can be sure that Jesus was not naked. If a Gospel writer had
wanted to refer to Jesus’ donkey used for transportation, he would not have needed to provide any detail about it because the first Christians had vivid recollections not only of what the donkey looked like but even of Jesus’ riding habits. If the
narrator, however, wants to talk about a donkey not as a means of transportation
but as something else, the real donkey or the historical donkey becomes a problem, particularly for people who had good knowledge about donkeys as means
of transportation, possibly even Jesus’ real donkey(s). While Jesus’ real donkey(s)
carried his belongings and possibly his weight to spare his energy, this donkey
carried his life in order to be sacrificed. Jesus needs to put aside his riding donkey
and sit on the story-telling donkey. In order to help us not confuse the function of
the donkey, the narrator is careful to disable the donkey from riding in order to
enable it to talk. Contrary to our historical-critical sensitivities, departures from
reality were not meant to baffle our mind and block it, but rather to stimulate it
and enable it to better grasp the meaning of the story. The real amazing thing is
not that a young untrained donkey would let Jesus ride on it, but that Jesus would
intentionally ride on a donkey meant to carry him to his death. The recollections
and the imagination of the historical donkey needed to be blocked to allow the
new donkey to explain what Jesus was determined to do. John purposefully blocks
our imagination in order to open and stimulate our understanding. The traveling
donkey had to be unloaded of Jesus’ physical weight so that the speaking donkey
could be loaded with Jesus’ mission.
If it is true that John places Jesus on a donkey unqualified for riding in order
to prevent us from thinking of Jesus real donkey in order to help us better understand what is happening in the Passion Narrative, then modern assumptions
about objective reality are quite different from the ancient ones. According to the
historical-critical scholarship, although ancient writers did not have the concept
of what really happened and therefore their stories have important gaps, ancient
readers did not have any difficulties in understanding the texts because their first-
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Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
hand knowledge of the reality helped them fill in the gaps. The following comment on Matthew’ s story is typical about how modern interpreters explain our
difficulties in making sense of ancient stories:
This account is one of many in the gospels in which the relevant circumstances were still so well known to the people when the oral tradition became fixed
that they were not included. This can be very baffling for the reader in search of
exact biographical detail. The high incidence of background information which
is assumed or omitted as taken for granted is eloquent proof of the immediacy
of the NT material—the transmitters of the oral tradition were not concerned
beyond the immediate accuracy of transmission.7
By contrast, we who are distant in time and have lost contact with the reality
behind the stories are no longer able to understand them unless we manage to
recover the historical reality by other means and that might provide us with the
key to understanding ancient texts.
In the light of our story, however, it seems that these assumptions need to be questioned. If John intentionally suppresses the historical donkey, then it is not true
that ancient people did not make the distinction between what really happened
and what did not and how things really happened and how they did not. To assume that John was not aware that riding a young and untrained donkey departed from how things really happened is unwarranted. The real difference between
ancient writers and modern scholars is that ancient people knew that how things
really happened did not necessarily help people better understand the story, but
rather often confused them. Therefore, sometimes they tried to force their readers
to override what they knew about objective reality in order to properly understand the message. It is as if the more someone knew about Jesus’ riding habits and
his actual donkey(s), the more difficult it would have been to understand that this
journey would end very differently from any of the previous journeys which Jesus
had undertaken on his historical donkey(s). The more one knew about Jesus’ historical traveling donkey(s) the more difficult it would be to understand that this
donkey had to do with his historical death. Ancient writers knew what we seem
to have forgotten, that sometimes what we know can prevent us from understanding than what we do not know. Sometimes to understand more or better is not to
7
W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann, Matthew: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, The Anchor
Bible 26 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), 251.
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ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
provide more details, but to suppress. While we try to supplement what we know,
they tried to block something of what the readers knew. Therefore, they employed
a device that I would call reality blocker. I would define reality blockers details in
a story which would make it harder for a reader to take the story as an accurate
description of how things regularly happen in order to enable the readers to grasp
the meaning.
The device of a reality blocker can sometimes be amplified to increase its effect. As
it was pointed out earlier, John uses the detail of age as a reality blocker, indicating
that the donkey was young or little (o)na/rion). Mark and Luke also indicate that
the animal was young by using the word “colt” (pw=loj), but expand the blocker
by adding “that has never been ridden” (Mark 11:2; Luke 19:30). This explanation
wants to make clear that the age of the donkey means that the donkey is not fit for
riding. The strongest blocker, however, is created by Matthew. Not only does he
retain the detail of the animal being a colt and therefore young, but he adds the
mother of the donkey implying that the donkey is so young that the mother is still
nursing it. In order to make sure that readers do not suppose that Jesus rode on
the mother and not on the young donkey, Matthew insists that Jesus actually rode
on both of them: “mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Matt
21:5). Hare correctly points out that there is no textual and linguistic justification
for Mathew’ s phrase and suggests that Mathew’ s text must be based on how Jesus
actually rode rather than on any Hebrew or Greek text:
According to the rules of Hebrew poetry, the original prophecy mentions only
one animal (“on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey”); both halves of the
poetic description refer to a male animal. Here Matthew prepares a fresh Greek
translation (he does not follow the Septuagint, capitalizing on the fact that the
Greek word for donkey can be used for either sex). In this way he is able to take
the first allusion to a donkey as referring to a she-ass and the second as speaking of her colt. Does Matthew make the prophecy correspond with the event or
the event with his perception of the prophecy? Since the Evangelist undoubtedly
knew the rules of poetic parallelism, there is perhaps a slight presumption in favor of the former. An unbroken colt usually accompanied its mother. He tells us
that the disciples placed garments (their own cloaks, or saddle clothes?) on both
animals and that Jesus sat on them. Some interpreters have ridiculed Matthew for
suggesting that Jesus was astride two animals simultaneously. Others have suggested that, since it was common to sit on a donkey with both legs on the same
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Reality, Language and Reality Blockers
side (sidesaddle style), it is possible that the clothes were thrown over both the
donkey and the foal at her side, so that Jesus was seen as riding the pair.8
That Matthew wrote “so that Jesus was seen as riding the pair” seems to be the
only truth that can possibly guide both the writing and the interpretation, indeed,
even the re-writing of the prophecy. But what if Matthew’ s purpose in writing was
precisely to prevent us from seeing Jesus as riding in order to enable as to see Jesus
as doing something else? What if he is trying to block our vision in order to open
our mind?
If I am right that ancient writers used reality blockers to enable the readers to
better understand a story, then the use of various blockers may still have some historical significance. All four gospel writers use reality blockers when using riding
in order to indicate through riding something else than mere transportation. This
suggests that all writers wrote at a time when donkeys were widespread means of
transportation and that would imply that such a blocker would not be as necessary
in a culture where standard means of transportation are cars rather than donkeys. We noticed that the strength of the blocker is different, with John’ s being the
weakest and Matthew’ s the strongest. This graduation may not be insignificant.
It is a well-established fact that John’ s gospel is the latest and was addressed to
an audience that was the most remote from the actual recollections of Jesus. This
may explain why he needed a weaker blocker to prevent his readers from thinking
about Jesus’ regular travels when reading the story. Matthew may have felt the
need for a stronger blocker if he supposed that his readers had quite strong actual
recollections of Jesus and of his real donkey(s). If my reasoning is correct, then it
would imply that John’ s account is the latest and Matthew’ s account would be the
oldest of the four, with the ones from Mark and Luke in between, somehow on a
par. I say Mathew’ s account and not Matthew’ s Gospel because I do not want to
suggest that the four Gospels as we have them are necessarily independent and
original works. Actually, there is strong evidence that that is not the case. That
the Synoptic Gospels are dependent on one another and possibly on a common
source is a fact which probably no one who is familiar with the synoptic problem
would question. The study of reality blockers, however, might provide important
clues as to which stories are the oldest, and if such a study reveals that the reality
8
Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1993), 238–9.
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ABRAHAM’S DONKEY
blockers occur consistently in a specific gospel, then that would be a strong indication that it preserves the oldest materials, if it is not necessarily the oldest Gospel. If no such consistency can be established, then we are back at square one as far
as the synoptic problem is concerned. The study of reality blockers for clarifying
the synoptic problem would go way beyond the scope of this study and therefore
I have no intention to pursue. Although the study of reality blockers is not of interest for solving the synoptic problem at this point, it is of extreme importance
for the study of ancient texts. If it is true than ancient writers used reality blockers as literary devices to better guide the reader to grasp the message, then the
abundance of absurdities that modern scholars identify in ancient texts is not due
to the fact that ancient people were not able to observe reality as a result of their
supposed mythical thinking, but rather because they did not have a simplistic and
reductionist understanding of reality as we do.
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