Giorgio Agamben The Time That Remains

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
English translation 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ
ing photocopying and recording, cir in any information stor
age or retrieval system without the prior written permission
of Stanford University Press.
The Time That Remains was originally published in Italian
under the title If tempo che resta. Un commento alfa Lettera ai
Romani 2000 Bollati Boringhieri.
Permission granted by James ]. Wilhelm to reprint his trans

lation of Arnaud Daniel's "Lo firm voler qu'el cor m'intra"
from If Migfior Fabbro. The Cult ofthe Difficult in Daniel,
Dante, and Pound (Orono: National Poetry Foundation,
University of Maine at Orono, 1982).
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free,archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agamben, Giorgio, 1942[Tempo che resta. English]
The time that remains : a commentary on the letter to the
Romans / Giorgio Agamben ; translated by Patricia Dailey.
p. cm. - (Meridian, crossing aesthetics)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8047-4382-7 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8047-4383-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Bible. N.T. Paul-Commentaries. I. Title. II. Series:
Meridian (Stanford, Calif:)
BS2665.53.A33 2005
22i107-DC22
Original Printing 2005
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
14 13 12 II 10 09 08 07 06 05
Contents
Acknowledgments and Translator's Note
The First Day
tx
Paulos doulos christou Ie'sou
In memoriam: Jacob Taubes, 3 Paul's Language, 3

Methodos, 5 The Ten Words, 6 Paulos, 7 On the Good
Use of Gossip,8 Doulos, 12 Talmud and Corpus iuris, 14
Christou Iesou, 15 Proper Names,16
The Second Day
Kletos
19
Beruf, 19 Vocation and Revocation,23 Chresis, 26

Klesis and Class, 29 AB If, 35 Impotential,37 Exigency,39
The Unforgettable, 39 Parable and Kingdom, 42
The Third Day
Aphorismenos
44
Pharisee,45 The Divided People,47 The Cut: of

Apelles,49 Remnant,53 The All and the Part,55
The Fourth Day
Apostolos
59
Nabi, 60 Apocalyptic,62 Operational Time, 65 Kairos

and Chronos, 68 Parousia, 69 Millenary Kingdom,72
TJpos, 73 Recapitulation,75 Memory and Salvation,77
The Poem and Rhyme, 78
The Fifth Day
Eis euaggelion theou
Eis, 88 Euaggelion, 88 Plirophoria, 91 Nomos, 91

Abraham and Moses,93 Katargein,95 Astheneia,97
Aujhebung, 99 Degree Zero,101 State of Exception,104
The Mystery of Anomia, 108 Antichrist,III
88
Contents
V111
The Sixth Day
(Eis euaggelion theou)
II3
Oath, II3 Deditio in fidem, II5 Bait, II7

Gratuitousness, II9 The Two Covenants, 121 Gift and
Grace, 123 Faith Divided, 124 Belief In, 126 Nominal
Sentence, 127 The Word of Faith, 129 Performative, 131
Performativum fidei, 134 The Nearness of the Word, 136
Threshold or Tornada
Citation, 138
Image, I41 Jetztzeit, 143
Appendix: Interlinear Translation ofPauline Texts

References
Index ofNames
I47
I87
I95
Acknowledgments and
Translator's Note
The ideas in this book developed over a series of seminars: ini

tially, in a shorter format, at the College International de
Philosophie in Paris, in October, 1998; then at the University of
Verona, in Winter 1998-99; finally, at Northwestern University, in
April, 1999, and the University of California, Berkeley, in October,
1999. The book represents the fruit of these seminars and is
indebted to discussions with participating students and professors.
The form of the leading idea rernained constant throughout each
seminar: it always consisted in a commentary ad litteram, in every
sense of the word, on the first ten words of the first verse of the
Letter to the Romans.
In the transliteration of Greek terms, I have simplified diacriti
cal marks and only indicate long syllables in the Greek by the use
of a macron over the corresponding vowel. The reader may, how
ever, find those passages of selected original Greek texts that were
closely analyzed and immediately linked to this seminar in the
Appendix. The Greek text used is that of Eberhard Nestle (Novum
Testamentum graece et latine, edited by Erwin Nestle and Kurt
Aland, United Bible Societies, London, 1963) . The interlinear
translation is that of Morgan Meis.
[ Translator's note. In accordance with the desire of the author, all

citations of Paul's Letters were translated into English as closely as
Acknowledgments and Translator's Note
possible with regard to the author's personal translation. Various

translations were consulted, used, and modified, including the
King James Version, the New International Version, the American
Standard Version, the Interlinear Greek New Testament, and the
International Standard Version. A special thanks to Morgan Meis
for his time and meticulous interlinear translation of the Greek in
the Appendix, and to Arne de Boever, Alessia Ricciardi, Dana
Hollander, Gil Anidjar, Stathis Gourgouris, and Neslihan
Senocak.]
THE TIME
HAT REMAINS
,,,* N,p"tt
iip11
"-m ,flj ii'(;-iiO \,
oracle of silence
Someone calls to me from Seir,
Watchman, what is left of the night?
Watchman, what is left of the night?
-Isaiah 2I:II
An
The First Day

Paulos doulos christou Iesou
First and foremost, this seminar proposes to restore Paul's

Letters to the status of the fundamental messianic text for the
Western tradition. This would seem a banal task, for no one
would seriously deny the messianic character of the Letters. And
yet, this is not self-evident, since two thousand years of transla
tion and commentary coinciding with the history of the
Christian church have literally cancelled out the messianic, and
the word Messiah itsel from Paul's text. Not that one should
conclude that there was something like a premeditated strategy of
neutralizing messianism, but anti-messianic tendencies were
doubtlessly operating within the Church as well as the
Synagogue, at various times and in diverse ways; nevertheless, the
problem raised here touches on more essential matters. For rea
sons that will become clear over the course of the seminar, a mes'"
sianic institution-or rather, a messianic community that wants
to present itself as an institution-faces a paradoxical task. As
Jacob Bernays once observed with irony, "to have the Messiah
behind you does not make for a very comfortable position"
(Bernays, 257) . But to have him perennially ahead of you can
also, in the end, be discomforting.
In both cases, we are confronted with an aporia that concerns
the very structure of messianic time and the particular conjunc
tion of memory and hope, past and present, plenitude and lack,
I
THE TIME THAT REMAINS
origin and end that this implies. The possibility of understanding

the Pauline message coincides fully with the experience of such a
time; without this, it runs the risk of remaining a dead letter. The
restoration of Paul to his messianic context therefore suggests,
above all, that we attempt to understand the meaning and inter
nal form of the time he defines as ho nyn kairos, the "time of the
now. " Only after this can we raise the question of how something
like a messianic community is in fact possible.
In this vein, one could say that a kind of subterranean solidarity
had existed between the Church and the Synagogue in presenting
Paul as the founder of a new religion. All evidence indicates that
Paul would have never dreamed of claiming this status, given that
he expected the imminent expiration of time. The reasons for this
complicity between Church and Synagogue are clear: for the one as
for the other, the aim is to cancel out or at least mute Paul's Judaism,
that is to say, to expunge it from its originary messianic context.
For this reason, a long-standing Hebrew literature on Jesus pres
ents him in benevolent terms-as "a nice guy,"l as Jacob Taubes
jokingly notes, or as Bruderjesus, to quote the tide of Ben Chorin's
book, published in 1967. Only recently have several Jewish schol
ars undertaken serious reexamination of Paul's Jewish context. In
the 1950s,vyhen W D. Davies's book Paul and Rabbinic judaism
emphatically called attention to the substantially Judeo-messianic
character of Pauline faith, Jewish studies were still dominated by
Buber's book Two Tjpes ofFaith. The thesis of this book, to which
we will later return, and which Taubes notes as being "highly
dubious but from which I learned a great deal" (Taubes, 6), oppos
es the Jewish emunah, an immediate and objective trust in the
community to which one belongs, to the Greek pistis, the subjec
tive recognition of a faith one judges to be true and to which one
converts. For Buber, the first is the faith ofJesus ( Glauben jesu)
while the second, the faith in Jesus ( Glauben an jesus), is, natural
ly, Paul's. But since then, things have clearly changed, and in
Jerusalem as in Berlin and the United States, Jewish scholars have
started to read Paul's letters with regard to their own context, even
if they have not yet considered them for what they really are, that
1.
This expression appears in English in Taubes.
The First Day
is, as the oldest and the most dem nding messianic texts of the
Jewish tradition.
From this perspective, Taubes's posthumous work The Political
Theology ofPaul (2004) marks
an important turning point, In Memoriam: Jacob Taubes
despite its being the record of
a seminar that lasted only a week. Taubes, who belonged to an old
family of Ashkenazi rabbis and had worked in Jerusalem with
Scholem (whose relation to Paul is, as we shall see, as complicated
as his relation to Benjamin), finds Paul to be the perfect represen
tative of messianism. Since our seminar proposes to interpret mes
sianic time as a paradigm of historical time, now, eleven years after
his Heidelberg seminar, we cannot begin without a dedication in
memoriam.
Paul's Letters are written in Greek, but what kind of Greek are
we talking about? Are we referring to New
Paul's Language
Testament Greek, about which Nietzsche
said that God gave proof of his tactfulness in
choosing such an impoverished language? Philosophical lexicons
as well as dictionaries and grammars of New Testament Greek
consider the texts that comprise the canon of the New Testament
as though they were perfectly homogeneous. From the perspective
of thought and of language, this is, of course, untrue. Paul's Greek,
unlike that of Matthew or Mark, does not consist of a translation
behind which an attentive ear, like Marcel Jousse's, could perceive
the rhythm and idiom of Aramaic. Wilamowitz-Mollendorf's
anti-Nietzscheanism is finally right in characterizing Pauline
Greek as a writer's language. "The fact that his Greek has nothing
to do with a school or a model, but rather flows directly out of his
heart in a clumsy fashion and in an uncontrollable outburst, and
the fact that his Greek is not translated Aramaic (as are the sayings
of Jesus) , makes him a classic of Hellenism" (Wilamowitz
Mollendorf, 159) .
Describing him as a "classic o f Hellenism" is nevertheless par
ticularly infelicitous. Taubes's anecdote on this subject proves
enlightening. One day in Zurich during the war, Taubes was tak-
ing a stroll with Emil Staiger, the renowned Germanist, who was
also an excellent Hellenist (and who had engaged in an interesting
epistolary exchange with Heidegger on the interpretation of a line
of Morike's poetry) . "One day we were walking along the
Ramistrasse from the university to the lake, to Bellevue, and he
turned a corner, and I was continuing on to the Jewish quarter in
Enge, and he said to me: You know, Taubes, yesterday I was read
ing the Letters of the Apostle Paul. To which he added, with great
bitterness: But that isn't Greek, it's Yiddish! Upon which I said:
Yes, Professor, and that's why I understand itl'" (Taubes, 4) . Paul
belongs to a Jewish Diaspora community that thinks and speaks
in Greek (Judeo-Greek) in precisely the same manner that
Sephardim would speak Ladino (or Judeo-Spanish) and the
Ashkenazi Yiddish. It is a community that reads and cites the
Bible in the Septuagint, which Paul does whenever necessary (even
if he occasionally appears to use a corrected version that is based
on the original, using what we would nowadays call a "personal
ized" version) . Unfortunately, this is not the occasion for us to
elaborate on this Judeo-Greek community and its having
remained in the shadow of the history of Judaism-the reasons for
which undoubtedly concern Paul at the core. The opposition
between Athns and Jerusalem, between Greek culture and
Judaism has become commonplace, starting at least with Shestov's
book (1938), which Benjamin characterizes as "admirable, but
absolutely useless" (Benjamin 1966, 803), and is particularly pop
ular with those who are not experts in either field. According to
this commonplace assumption, the community to which Paul
belonged (which also produced Philo and Flavius Josephus, as well
as numerous other works requiring further study) was subject to
distrust because it was imbued with Greek culture and because it
read the Bible in the language of Aristotle and Plato. This is the
equivalent of saying, "Trust not the Spanish Jews, because they
read Gongora and translated the Bible into Ladino, " and "Trust
not the Eastern Jews, because they speak a kind of German." Yet
there is nothing more genuinely Jewish than to inhabit a language
of exile and to labor it from within, up to the point of confound
ing its very identity and turning it into more than just a gram-
The First Day
matical language: making it a minor language, a jargon (as Kafka

called Yiddish) , or a poetic language (like Yehuda Halevi's and
Moshe ibn Ezra's Judeo-Andalusian kharjas, discovered in the
Cairo genizah) . And yet, in each case it is also a mother tongue,
even though, as Rosenzweig says, it bears witness to the fact that
"so far as his language is concerned, the Jew feels always he is in a
foreign land, and knows that the home of his language is in the
region of the holy language, a region everyday speech can never
invade" (Rosenzweig, 302) . (In Scholem's letter to Rosenzweig,
dated December 1926-one of the few texts in which Scholem
adopts a prophetic tone in describing the religious force of a lan
guage that revolts against the very people who speak it-we wit
ness one of the most intense rejections of the Hebrew language as
a language of everyday use.)
This is the perspective from which we should account for Paul's
language and this Judeo-Greek community that constitutes just as
important a chapter in the Jewish Diaspora as does Sephardic cul
ture up to the eighteenth century and Ashkenazi culture in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hence the meaning of both
Staiger's observation ("It's not Greek, it's Yiddish!") and Norden's
reserve, which he expresses in his excellent book Die antike
Ku nstp rosa: "Paul's style, globally speaking, is not Hellenistic"
(Norden, 509) . Nevertheless, Paul's style does not have a peculiar
ly Semitic coloring either. Being neither Greek, nor Hebrew, nor
lashon ha-qodesh, nor secular idiom, is what makes his language so
interesting (even if we are not yet at the point of confronting the
problem of its messianic status) .
I would like to have read and gone through all of this non
Greek in the Letter to the Romans with you today
Methodos
word by word, given that it is the testamentary
compendium of Paul's thought, of his gospel, par
excellence. But since we do not have time for such an endeavor, in
addition to reasons I will not pursue at this moment, we will have
to place our stakes in this brief time, on this radical abbreviation
of time that is the time that remains. For Paul, the contraction of
time, the "remaining" time (I Cor. 7:29 : "time contracted itself:
THE TIME THAT REMAIN S
the rest is") represents the messianic situation par excellence, the
only real time. I have subsequently decided on our reading only
the first verse of the letter, and translating and commenting on it,
word for word. I will be satisfied if: at the end of this seminar, we
are able to understand the meaning of this first verse, in its literal
sense and in every other aspect. This is a modest endeavor, but it
depends on a preliminary wager: we will be treating this fi r st verse
as though its first ten words recapitulate the meaning of the text
in its entirety.
Following epistolary practices of the period, Paul generally
begins his letters with a preamble in which he presents himself and
names his addressees. The fact that the greeting of the Letter to the
Romans differs from others in its length and doctrinal content has
not gone unnoticed. Our hypothesis pushes further, for it suppos
es that each word of the incipit contracts within itself the com'plete text of the Letter, in a vertiginous recapitulation.
(Recapitulation is an essential term for the vocabulary of messian
ism, as we shall see later.) Understanding the incipit therefore
entails an eventual understanding of the text as a whole.
PAULOS DOULOS CHRISTOU IESOU, KLETOS APOSTOLOS APHORIS

MENOS EIS EUAGGELION THEOU. The Latin
The Ten Words
translation by Jerome used for centuries by

the Catholic Church reads: Paulus servus Jesu
Christi, vocatus apostolus, segregatus in evangelium Dei. A current
literal English translates, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to
be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God."
One preliminary philological observation. We read the Pauline
text in modern versions. (In our case Nestle-Aland's critical edi
tion, which is a revised edition, published in I962, of Eberhard
Nestle's I898 edition that abandoned the Erasmian Textus receptus
and instead based itself on a comparison between the I869
Tischendorf text and the I88I Westcott-Hort text.) In contrast to
the manuscript tradition, these editions necessarily introduce
modern conventions of writing, like punctuation, into the text,
and in doing so they occasionally presuppose semantic choices.
This is why, in our verse, the comma after Iesou makes for a syn-
The First Day
tactic break, separating doulos from kletos, that refers the latter to
apostolos ("servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle") . Yet
nothing prevents us from opting for a different scansion, reading
Paulos doulos christou Jesou kletos, apostolos aphorismenos eis euagge

lion theou as "Paul, called as slave of Jesus the Messiah, separated
as apostle for the announcement of God." This second reading
would, among other things, better correspond with Paul's explicit
affi rmation (I Cor. 1 5:9) : ouk eimi hikanos kaleisthai apostolos ("I
am not worthy to be called apostle" ) . Without yet choosing one
over the other, at this point we should remember that, from the
syntactic point of view, the verse presets itself like a single nomi
nal syntagma that is absolutely paratactic, uttered in one single
breath, moving according to the crescendo: servitude, calling,
envoi, separation.
I will spare you the endless discussions on the subject of the
name Paulos, concerning whether, as a Roman name, it
Paulos
is actually a praenomen or a cognomen, or perhaps even
a signum or a supernomen (that is to say, a surname),
and the reasons for which "the young Jew with the proud biblical
Palestinian name of Sha'ul, which at the same time emphasized
the descent of his family from the tribe of Benjamin, was given
this Latin cognomen" (Hengel, 9) . Why doesn't Paul ever give his
full name, i according to a completely unfounded conjecture, his
name was Caius Julius Paulus? What relation exists between his
Roman name and Sha' ul, his Hebrew name (which, in the
Septuagint, is written as Sao ul or Saoulos, and not Saulos) ? These
problems as well as others stem from a passage in Acts I3:9, which
reads, Saulos ho kai Paulos (ho kai is the Greek equivalent of the
Latin qui et, which usually introduces a surname and can mean
"who is also called") .
My methodological choice (which also entails basic philological
precaution) consists here-and in general for the interpretation of
Pauline texts-in not taking into account later sources, even if
they are other New Testament texts. In his letters, Paul always and
only calls himself Paulos. And this is all there is, nothing more to
add. For those who would like to know more on this subject, per-
mit m e t o refer you t o the early study b y Hermann Dessau (1910)

or to the more recent work--though by no means more astute
by Gustave Adolphus Harrer (1940) . Most of what you find there,
however, is simply gossip, which is also the case for all the specu
lations on Paul's trade, on his studies with Gamaliel, and so on.
This does not mean that gossip cannot be interesting; on the con
trary, to the extent that it entertains a nontrivial relation to truth
that eludes the problem of verification and falsification and claims
to be closer to truth than factual adequation, gossip is certainly a
form of art. The peculiarity of its epistemological status lies in the
fact that in itself it accounts for the possibility of an error that do'es
not entirely undermine the definition of truth. Intelligent gossip
therefore interests us independently of its verifiable character. That
said, to treat gossip as though it were information is truly an
unforgivable apaideusia [lack of refinement].
While it may not be legitimate to unhesitatingly deduce from a
text information that suppos
On the Good Use of Gossip edly refers to the biographic
reality of its author or charac
ters, such information may still be used as a starting point for a
better understanding of the text itself: or for the internal function
that the author, the characters, or their respective names assume
within the text. In other words, the good use of gossip is not
excluded. In this vein, when the author of the Acts changes to
Paulos the name of the character who up to that point had been
called Saulos, we can read a significance in the sudden shift. In lit
erary texts, we occasionally find that an author changes identity
over the course of the narration-for example, when Guillaume
de Lorris, the supposed author of The Romance of the Rose, gives
way to an equally unknown Jean de Meun, or when Miguel de
Cervantes declares at a certain point that the real author of the
novel he is writing is not himself, but a so-called Cid Hamete Ben
engeli. (In this case, Benengeli is actually the transcription of an
Arabic word that means "son of a stag," which is probably an iron
ic allusion to the hazy circumstances surrounding the author's
birth, taking into account those laws concerning the limpieza del
The First Day
sangre, purity of blood, that discriminate against those with

Hebrew or Moorish ancestry.)
In the Hebrew context, the archetype for metanomasia, that is,
for the changing of a name of a character, is found in Genesis 17:5,
when God himself intervenes and changes the names of Abraharn
and Sarah, adding a letter to each name. Philo dedicates an entire
treatise, De mutatione nominum, to this problem and comments at
length on the Abraham and Sarah episode (as do two of his
Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin) . Contra those who ridicule
God's going out of his way to give Abraham the gift of one mere let
ter, Philo brings attention to the fact that this slight addition actu
ally changes the meaning of the whole name-and, as a result, the
entire person of Abraham himself On the addition of rho to the
name Sarah, Philo writes, "What seems to merely be the simple
addition of a letter, in reality produces a new harmony. Instead of
producing the small, it produces the great; instead of the particular,
dle universal; instead of the mortal, the immortal" (Philo, I24-25) .
The fact that this treatise is not even mentioned in the recent lit-,
erature on the name of the apostle (but is cited many times in
Origen's and Erasmus's commentaries) is a prime example of what
Giorgio Pasquali used to call coniunctivitis projessoria (or in this
instance, theologico-professoria). 2 In charlging only one letter of his
name, in replacing pi by sigma, Saulos could have possibly had
according to the author of the Acts, who was well versed in
Hellenized Judaism-an analogous "new harmony" in mind. Saulos
is in fact a regal name, and the man who bore this name surpassed
all Israelites, not only in beauty, but also in stature (I Sam. 9:2; this
is why, in the Koran, Saul is called Talut, the highest) . The substi
tution of sigma by pi therefore signifies no less than the passage from
the regal to the insignificant, from grandeur to smallness paulus in
Latin means "small, of little significance," and in I Corinthians I5:9
Paul defines himself as "the least [elachistosJ of the apostles."
Paul is therefore a surname, the messianic signum (which is the
same as a supernomen) that the apostle bestows on himself at the
moment he fully assumes the messianic vocation. The formula ho
2. Translator's note : See Giorgio Pasquali's Pagine stravaganti di un philol
ogo (Florence: Editrice Le Lettere, 1994).
IO
kai leaves no room for speculation around its referring to a sur

name and not a cognomen, and it is hard to believe that, after
Lambertz's studies on surnames in the Roman Empire, anyone
could ever support arguments to the contrary. According to a
practice that spread from Egypt to all of Asia Minor, ho kai is the
formula that normally introduces a surname. Among the examples
catalogued by Lambertz we find a ho kai Paulos that the scholar
thought was taken from the name of the apostle but which most
likely only repeats within itself the implicit gesture of humility
(Lambertz I9I4, I52) . Scholars of onomastics have long since noted
that as the Roman trinomial system began to wane and give way
to the modern uninomial system, many of the new names were
actually only surnames, often diminutives or perjoratives, which
were taken for proper names in keeping with the Christian claim
for creaturely humility. We possess lists of these surnames, lists
that document in flagranti the transition from noble Latin ono
mastics to the new Christian quasi name:
Januarius qui et Asellus
Lucius qui et Porcellus
lldebrandus. qui et Pecora
Manlius qui et Longus
Amelia Maura qui et Minima . . .
Saulos qui et Paulos therefore carries within itself an onomastic
prophecy that would sustain a long legacy. Metanomasia realizes

the intransigent messianic principle articulated firmly by the apos
tle, in which those things that are weak and insignificant will, in
the days of the Messiah, prevail over those things the world con
siders to be strong and important (I Cor. I:27-28: "But God hath
chosen . . . the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty, . . . and things which are not, to bring to
nought the things that are") . The messianic separates the proper
name from its bearer, who from this point on may bear only an
improper name, a nickname. After Paul, all of our names are only
signa, surnames.
Confirmation of the messianic significance of metanomasia can
even be found in the verse on which we are commenting. In this
The First Day
II
instance, the name Paul is immediately linked t o the word doulos,

"slave." Since slaves did not have any juridical status in classical
antiquity, they did not have veritable names and could be given
names only by their owners, according to the owners' whim.
Slaves frequently received a new name upon acquisition
(Lambertz 1906-8, 19) . Plato ( Cratylus 384d) alludes to this cus
tom, writing, "We frequently change the names of our slaves, and
the newly imposed name is as good as the old." Philostratus recalls
that Herod Atticus bestowed the twenty-four letters of the alpha
bet as names to his slaves, so that his son could train himself in
calling them. Among these non-names, these mere signa of slaves,
aside from names that indicate geographical provenance, we often
find nicknames that describe a physical quality, such as micos,
micros, micrine (little, tiny) or longus, longinus, megellos (tall, large) .
At the very moment when the call transforms him who is a free
man into "the slave of the Messiah," the apostle must, like a slave,
lose his name, whether it be Roman or Jewish. From this point on
he must call himself by a simple surname. This did not escape the
sensibility of Augustine, who-in countering a misleading sugges
tion made by Jerome, repeated again by the moderns, that the
name Paul supposedly came from the name of the proconsul
whom he converted-knew perfectly well that Paul simply means
"little" ("Paulum . . . minimum est"; Enarrationes in Psalmos
72:4) . This should do for gossip.
The methodological precaution of excluding everything that

comes after a specific text is impossible here. The memory of a cultivat
ed reader is comparable to a historical dictionary containing all of the
uses of a term, from a term's first appearance up to the present day. A
historical being (as is, by definition, language) monadically carries with
in himself the entirety of his history (or as Benjamin would say, all of his
pre- and posthistory) . One may consequently attempt to disregard the
given meanings of a term after a certain date-which is what we shall be
attempting here, with the highest possible degree of meticulousness.
Keeping distinct the successive moments of a word's semantic history is
not always easy, especially when, as with the Pauline text, this history
coincides with the history of Western culture as a whole, with its deci
sive caesuras and continuities. If the interpretation of the New
12
Testament is inextricable from the history of its tradition and transla

tions, then, for this very reason, precaution becomes all the more neces
sary. It is often the case that a later meaning, the product of ages of the
ological discussions, is integrated into lexicons and is uncritically pro
jected back onto the text. The task thus remains of creating a Pauline
lexicon of technical terms (not to be confused with a lexicon of the New
Testament as a whole) . Our seminar would like to consider itself as an
initial contribution, however partial, to this task.
This precaution does not imply any judgment on the historical value of
a text like the Acts, itself the subject of much debate. As we have seen,
this precaution is only valid when taken in a general philological and
conceptual way. To be able to distinguish what is of true historical value
and what is part of a hagiographic construction in Luke's text (to dis
cern, for example, if the "cloven tongues like as of fire" mentioned in
Acts 2:3 pertain to any historical event) is, without a doubt, a task
beyond our present means.
The importance of the term doulos (servant, slave) in Paul is

witnessed in the term's frequent use. It appears 47 times
Doulos in the Pauline text, more than a third of the 127 occurrences in the New Testament. Even before he presents
himself as an apostle, Paul chooses to present himself to the
Romans as a slave (as he does in Phil. 1:1 and in Titus 1:1) . But
what does it mean to be "a slave of the Messiah"? In tracing out
the semantic history of the term doulos, the New Testament lexi
cons habitually contrast the predominantly juridical meaning that
the term acquired in the classical world-which technically refers
to the slave inasmuch as he is subjected to the power of the domi
nus-despotes (if the Greeks wanted to stress the generic relation of
a slave's belonging to the oikos of his owner they would use the
term oiketes)-to the markedly religious connotation that the cor
responding Hebrew word 'ebed (like the Arabic 'abd) acquires in
the Semitic world. The opposition does not aid our understand
ing of how doulos is used technically in the Pauline text, for, in
Paul, doulos refers to a profane juridical condition and at the same
time refers to the transformation that this condition undergoes in
its relation to the messianic event.
The juridical usage of the term becomes evident in passages that
The First Day
13
oppose doulos to eleutheros (free) and follow the antithesis Jew/Greek

(such as I Cor. 12:13: "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one
body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free"; in addition, see Gal. 3:28 and
Col. 3:n). Here Paul is concurrently evoking the two fundamental
divisions of people: one according to Hebrew law (Hebrew goyim
reaffirmed in Gal. 2:7 in the form "circumcision-foreskin"), and the
other according to Roman law. 3 In the first book of The Digest of
Justinian, under the rubric of de statu hominum, we read
"summa . . . de iure personarum divisio haec est, quod omnes aut
liberi sunt aut servi [certainly, the great divide in the law of persons
is this: all men are either free or slaves]" Qustinian, 15) .
Doulos acquires a technical meaning in Paul (as in "slave of the
Messiah," or the quasi-slang hyper doulon, "super-slave, beyond
slave," in Philem. 1:16) . It is used to express the neutralization that
the divisions of the law and all juridical and social conditions in
general undergo as a consequence of the messianic event. The
definitive passage for understanding the usage of the term is I
Corinthians 7:20-23: "Let every man abide in the same calling
wherein he was called. Art thou called being a slave? Care not for
it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is
called in the Lord, being a slave, is the Lord's freeman: likewise
also he that is called being free, is slave of the Messiah." Because
this passage necessitates lengthy commentary in order to interpret
the terms kletos and klesis, I will postpone this analysis until later.
We may nevertheless anticipate one thing: that the syntagma
"slave of the Messiah" defines the new messianic condition for
Paul, the principle of a particular transformation of all juridical
conditions (which, for this reason, are not simply abolished) .
,
Moreover, we may note that the comparison with I Corinthians
7:22-in terms of the strong tie this passage sets up between the
verb group kaleo ("I call") and the term doulo.t--permits for read
ing a different scansion in our incipit: "Paul, called (as) a servant
of Jesus Christ, an apostle separated unto the announcement of
God." In its being situated precisely at the center of the ten words
3. Translator's note. Agamben uses prepuzio, the Italian word for foreskin
rather than un circumscribed or uncircumcision, so I have done the same in
order to render audible the bodily quality of Paul's language.
that comprise this verse, kletos, "calling," constitutes a kind of con

ceptual pivot, which can be turned just as much toward the first
half (toward him who was free but now becomes a slave of the
Messiah) as toward the second half (toward him who was not wor
thy of being called apostle and becomes separated as such) . In
either case, the messianic calling is a central event in Paul's indi
vidual history, as it is for the history of humanity.
Although studies on the relation between Roman law and Hebrew
law, and on Paul's position with regard
to both, remain largely insufficient,
Talmud and Corpus iuris
they are nevertheless promising. (Alan
Watson's books provide interesting starting points concerning the rela
tion of Jesus to Hebrew and Roman law, especially Jesus and the Law
and Ancient Law and Modern Understanding, Boaz Cohen's book
Jewish and Roman Law is, however, not as helpful. On the relation
between Paul and Hebrew law, see Peter Tomson's Paul and the Jewish
Law, which provides a good demonstration of the current reversal
among scholars, who are now hurrying, undoubtedly for good reasons,
to find the Halacha in the Pauline text regardless of consequence.)
Nevertheless, the feeble opposition that sets the classical world against
Judaism reveals its shortcomings precisely at this point. At first sight,
Mishnah and Talmud, in their formal structure, seem to find no cor
responding resemblance in all of Western culture. However, even the
reader without any knowledge of the history of the law quickly notices
that a fundamental work in Western culture resembles the Jewish com
pilations to the extent of being quasi-identical to them. We are refer-'
ring to The Digest, that is, the book of the Corpus iuris civilis, in which
Justinian brings together the opinions of great Roman j urisconsults.
One after the other, opinions of jurists of diHerent ages are listed in
response to various questions, sometimes in sharp contrast to one
another, in exactly the same way that the Mishnah and Talmud draw
up a list of the opinions of rabbis from the houses of Shammai and
Hillel. In the following passage taken from The Digest, one only need
replace Roman names with Hebrew names to confirm the formal anal
ogy beyond doubt:
'6
Ulpian, Sabinus, book 22: When someone legates stores, let us see what
is embraced by the legacy. Quintus Mucius writes in the second book
of his Civil Law that things intended to be eaten and drunk are includ-
The First Day
15
ed in a legacy of stores. Sabinus writes to the same effect in his books

on Vitelli us. Whatever of these, he says, [are kept for the use of] the
head of the household, or his wife, or children, or the household
which habitually surrounds them; likewise, of pack animals which are
kept for the owner's use. But Aristo notes that things which are not for
eating and not for drinking are also included in the legacy, as, for
instance, those things in which we are accustomed to eat things, such
as oil, fish sauce, brine, honey, and other similar items. Admittedly, he
says, if edible stores are legated, Labeo writes in the ninth book of his
Posthumous Works that none of these things goes with the legacy,
because we are accustomed not to eat these things but to eat other
things by means of them. In the case of honey, Trebatius states the
opposite, rightly, because we are accustomed to eat honey. But
Pro cui us correctly writes that all these things are included, unless the
testator's intention should appear otherwise. Did he legate as eatables
those things which we are accustomed to eat or also those things by
means of which we eat other things? The latter should also be consid
ered to be included in the legacy, unless the intention of the head of
the household is shown to be otherwise. Certainly, honey always goes
with edible stores, and'not even Labeo denied that fish too, along with
their brine, are included (Justinian, 33, 9 ) . The analogy is all the more
noteworthy in that the Corpus iuris civilis and the Talmud are con
temporary with each other (both dating back to the mid-sixth centu
ry C.E.).
If you look at a current rendering of our verse, it is impossible

not to notice that from the Vulgate on, severChristou Iesou
al terms in the Greek are not translated but
are instead substituted with a calque: apostle
for apostolos, evangel for euaggelion and, above all, Christ for
Christos. Each reading and each new translation of the Pauline text
must begin by keeping in mind the fact that christos is not a prop
er name, but is, already in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of
the Hebrew term mashiab, "the anointed," that is, the Messiah.
Paul has no familiarity with Jesus Christ, only with Jesus Messiah
or the Messiah Jesus, as he writes interchangeably. In the same
fashion, he never uses the term christianos and even if he knew of
this term (which seems to be implied in Acts n :26) , this would
only have meant "messianic," especially in the sense of disciple of
the Messiah. This presupposition is obvious in the sense that no
16
one could seriously claim the contrary; nevertheless, it is anything

but trivial. A millenary tradition that left the word christos
untranslated ends by making the term Messiah disappear from
Paul's text. The euaggelion tou christou of Romans 15:19 is the
announcement of the coming of the Messiah. The formula Iesous
estin ho christos (Jesus is the Christ)-which in John 20:31 and Acts
9:22 signifies the messianic faith of the community Paul address
es-would not make any sense if christos were a proper name. It is
absurd to refer to a "messianic conscience" of Jesus or his apostles
(as do some modern theologians) , if one has to first hypothesize
that the apostles took christos for a proper name. Admitting that
one can talk of a Christology in Paul, it coincides fully with the
doctrine of the Messiah.
We will therefore always translate christos as "Messiah." That the
term Christ consequently never appears in our text is not meant to
signal any polemic intention nor a Judaizing reading of the
Pauline text; rather, it entails an elementary philological scruple
that all translators should follow, whether or not they be equipped
with an imprimatur.
The assertion, often found in modern commentaries, that the
syntagma Christos Ii sous (or Iisous Christos) is
Proper Names supposed to construct only one proper name
obviously lacks any philological basis. The dis
tinction between Christos (capitalized) and christos as an appella
tion was introduced by modern editors. Not only do the most
ancient manuscripts fail to distinguish between capitalized and
noncapitalized words, they also write christos--as with other nom
ina sacra such as theos, kyrios, pneuma, lesous, and so on-in an
abbreviated form (which, according to Ludwig Traube, stems from
the Hebrew interdiction of pronouncing the tetragrammaton) .
But, in the preface to the Nestle-Aland edition, we find "christos
will be written in lower case when it signals 'the ofEcial designa
tion' (Amstbezeichnung) of the Messiah (for example Matt. 16:16),
and in upper case when it has clearly become a proper name (for
example, in Gal. 3:24-29) ." The real difficulty with this rnore or
less conscious transgression of the most basic philological princi-
The First Day
17
pIes, lies in determining this self-evident "when." This was cer

tainly not a problem for the evangelists, who knew perfectly well
what the term christos signified ("We have found the Messiah,
which is, being interpreted, christos"; John 1:41) . Nor was it a prob
lem for the Church Fathers, from Origen (ten christos prosegorian
["the title christ"] ; Commentary on the Gospel According to John,
72), 4 to Justin (who otherwise would not have said to the Jew
Trypho, "We are all awaiting the christ") .
The distinction between ho christos with the article and christos
without the article is just as devoid of value in the Pauline text,
given that, in a completely analo gous fashion, Paul writes the
word nomos sometimes with an article and sometimes without,
never meaning for him that nomos has become a proper name. To
the contrary, a formal analysis of the Pauline text shows that chris
tos could only be an appellative, fiom the instant that the apostle
refrains from writing kyrios christos (uniting two appellatives with
differing connotations) , and only writes kyrios Iesous christos, kyrios
Iesous, christos Jesous kyrios emon (Coppens, 133) . In general, one
should never forget that it is beyond an author's power to take a
term that is in current use in the linguistic context of his life and
make it into a proper name, especially with regard to a funda
mental concept, such as that of the Messiah for a Jew. The prob
lem of distinguishing those passages in which the term maintains
its "Old Testament" meaning is a pseudoproblem trom the very
start, for not only is it impossible for Paul to distinguish between
an Old and New Testament in the way we do now, that is, as two
textual wholes, but his reference to the kaine diatheke is an "Old
Testament" citation (Jer. 31:31) that specifically refers to the mes
sianic accomplishment of the Torah. (The palaia diatheke "is
made inoperative in the Messiah"; 2 Cor. 3:14.)
When, in a modern commentary on the Letter to the Romans,
we find, "Here we first read Christ Jesus, then Jesus Christ. The
two formulas constitute one sole proper name, in which the
appellative meaning of the Messiah tends to fade away" (Huby,
4-
Translator's note. For the Greek see the bilingual Greek/French edition
Commentaire sur saint jean, I: Books I-S, ed. Cecile Blanc
used by Agamben:
(Paris: Editions du Cerf: 1996). This passage is found in book

191, pp. 154-55
I, paragraph
18
38-39), we may completely disregard its claim, for it projects our

forgetting of the original meaning of the term christos back onto
the Pauline text. This is clearly no accident but one of the sec
ondary effects of the admirable works of constructing the section
of Christian theology the moderns called Christology. Our semi
nar does not set out to measure itself against the Christological
problem; rather, more modestly and more philosophically, it seeks
to understand the meaning of the word christos, that is, "Messiah."
What does it mean to live in the Messiah, and what is the mes
sianic life? What is the structure of messianic time? These ques
tions, meaning Paul's questions, must also be ours.
The Second Day

Kletos
The term kletos, which comes from the verb kaleo, to call, means
"calling" (Jerome translates it as vocatus) . This term appears in the
greeting of the first Letter to the Corinthians; in the other letters,
we often find the following formula: "apostle by the will of God."
We should pause to reflect on this term, for in Paul the linguistic
family of the word kaleo acquires a technical meaning that is essen
tial to Paul's definition of messianic life, especially when found in
the deverbative form klesis, meaning "vocation, calling. " The
definitive passage is I Corinthians 7:17-22:
But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every
one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all communities [ekklesias,
another word from the same family as kaleo] . Is any man called being
circumcised? let him not remove the mark of circumcision. Is any called
with a foreskin? let him not be circumcised! Circumcision is nothing,
and the foreskin is nothing. . . . Let every man abide in the same calling
wherein he was called. Art thou called being a slave? care not for it: but
if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the
Lord, being a slave, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called,
being free, is slave of the Messiah.
What does klesis mean here? What does the following phrase
mean: "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called [ en te klesei he eklethe]"? Before Beruf
answering this question, we must first examine the
19
20
problem arising from the strategic use of the term klesis-or,

better yet, from the word's translation into the German Beruf
in one of the most definite works in the social sciences in our
century, Max Weber's Protestant E thic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1904) . You are certainly familiar with Weber's the
sis, the one concerning what he calls the "spirit of capitalism,"
meaning the mentality that makes of profit a good, independ
ently of hedonistic or utilitarian motives-that it originates
from a Calvinist and Puritan professional ascesis emancipated
from its religious foundation. This means that the capitalist
spirit is a secularization of the Puritan ethic of the profession.
What specifically interests us is that this modern concept of
profession is in turn constructed out of the Pauline passage on
klesis that we have j ust read, transforming the messianic voca
tion in question into the modern conception of Beruf as both
vocation and worldly profession.
We witness a turning point in the process of secularization of
messianic klesis in the Lutheran translation of klesis by Beruf in
several passages of the letters and specifically in the passage that
concerns us, I Corinthians 7:17-22. It is through the Lutheran ver..:
sion that a term originally signifying the vocation that only God
or the Messiah addressed to man acquires the modern sense of a
"profession." Shortly after Luther, the Calvinists and the Puritans
invested it with an entirely new ethical meaning. According to
Weber, the Pauline text does not convey any positive valuation of
worldly professions, but only an attitude of "eschatological indif
ference." This is a consequence of awaiting the imminent end of
the first Christian communities: "Since everyone was awaiting the
coming of the Lord, then let everyone remain in the estate [StandJ
and the secular occupation [Hantierung] in which the call [Ruf]
of the Lord has found him, and continue to labor as before"
(Weber, 31) . Luther, who at first shared Paul's eschatological indif
ference, at a certain point, especially after the experience of the
peasant revolts, gradually leans toward a new understanding of the
importance of an individual's concrete profession being that of a
command placed in him by God to fulfill the duties that corre-
The Second Day
21
spond with the worldly position imposed upon him. "The indi
vidual should remain once and for all in the station and calling in
which God had placed him, and should restrain his worldly activ
ity within the limits imposed by his established station in life"
(Weber, 85) .
Weber frames the problem of the exact meaning of the term
klesis in the Pauline text in this particular context and dedicates a
long note to it. "Luther," he writes,
translates two apparently quite distinct concepts as Beruf Firstly the
Pauline klesis in the sense of the calling of God to eternal salvation. In
this category belong: r Corinthians r:26; Ephesians r:r8; 4:r, and 4:4; 2
Thessalonians r:II; Hebrews 3 :r; 2 Peter r:lO. All these cases relate to the
purely religious concept of the calling Berufongj which comes from God
by means of the gospel preached by the apostle. The term klesis has
nothing whatever to do with secular "callings" in the present-day sense.
(Weber, 5 5)
According to Weber, the connection between the "purely" reli

gious usage of the term "calling" and the modern term Berufis
constituted precisely on the basis of our passage, 1 Corinthians 7.
It is useful to quote Weber's reflections on this passage, for they
betray a difficulty he is unable to resolve:
The translation of a passage in the First Letter to the Corinthians forms
a bridge between those two seemingly quite distinct uses of the word
"Bemf" by Luther. In Luther (in the usual modern editions) , the con
text in which this passage is located is as follows: r Corinthians 7:17:
"Only as the Lord hath distributed to each man, as God hath called
each, so let him walk. . . . Was any man called being circumcised? let
him not remove the mark of circumcision. Hath any man been called
uncircumcised? let him not be circumcised! Circumcision is nothing,
and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments
of God. Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called (en te
klese he eklethe-as Professor Merx tells me, this is unquestionably a
Hebraism-the Vulgate translates it as in qua vocatione vocatus est) . Wast
thou called being a bond-servant? care not for it. " . . . In his exegesis of
this chapter, Luther, even in r523, had followed the older German ver
sions by translating klesis in verse 20 as "Ruf" . . . and had at that time
22
interpreted this as "Stand" (estate or condition) . It is in fact evident that

the word klesis in this-and only this-passage corresponds at least
approximately to the Latin "status" and our "Stand" (in German), i.e.,
state, estate, or condition, as in married state, the condition of a servant,
etc. In verse 20 Luther, following the older German translations, even in
1523 in his exegesis of this chapter, renders klesis with Beruf, and inter
prets it with Stand ["status"] . . . . But of course not as Brentano . . .
assumes, in the modern sense of Berufas profession. (Weber, 5 6-57)
What does it mean that the term kles'is may and may not have
the same meaning as the modern Beruf? Is it correct to interpret
the Pauline concept of the call, like Weber does, as an expression
of "eschatological indifference" toward worldly conditions? In
addition, how exactly does the passage in question carry out the
transition from the religious meaning of vocation to that of a pro
fession? The determining moment obviously occurs in verse 20, in
the en te klese he eklethe that Weber, in accepting a suggestion from
Merx, interprets as a Hebraism. In truth, this hypothesis harbors
no philological bearing and only reflects a purely semantic diffi
culty in comprehension. From a syntactic-grammatical point of
view, the phrase is in fact perspicuous, and Jerome renders it with
out any difficulty as in qua vocatione vocatus est. In an even more
literal fashion, he could have written in vocatione qua vocatus est,
"in the calling whereby he was called. " The Greek anaphoric pro
noun he (Lat. qua) is a perfect rendering of the meaning of the for
mula, of its peculiar tautegorical movement that comes from the
call and returns back to it. According to the proper meaning of
each anaphora, he actually signals a taking up of the previously
mentioned term (here, klesis) . This anaphoric movement is con
stitutive of the meaning of Pauline klesis and thus makes klesis a
technical term in his messianic vocabulary. Klesis indicates the par
ticular transformation that every juridical status and worldly con
dition undergoes because of, and only because of, its relation to
the messianic event. It is therefore not a matter of eschatological
indifference, but of change, almost an internal shifting of each and
every single worldly condition by virtue of being "called." For
Paul, the ekklesia, the messianic community, is literally all kleseis,
all messianic vocations. The messianic vocation does not, howev-
The Second Day
23
er, have any specific content; it is nothing but the repetition of

those same factical or juridical conditions in which or as which we
are called. Inasmuch as klesis describes this immobile dialectic, this
movement sur place, it can be taken for both the factical condition
and the juridical status that signifies "vocation" as much as it does
Beruf
According to the apostle, this movement is, above all, a nullifi
cation: "Circumcision is nothing, and the foreskin is nothing."
That which, according to the law, rnade one man a Jew and the
other a goy, one a slave and another a free man, is now annulled
by the vocation. Why remain in this nothing? Once again, meneto ("remaining") does not convey indifference, it signifies the
immobile anaphoric gesture of the messianic calling, its being
essentially and foremost a calling ofthe calling. For this reason, it
may apply to any condition; but for this same reason, it revokes a
condition and radically puts it into question in the very act of
adhering to it.
This is what Paul says just a bit further on, in a remarkable pas
sage that may be his most rigorous definition of messianic life Vocation and Revocation
(1 Cor. 7:29-32) : "But this I say,
brethren, time contracted itself, the rest is, that even those having
wives may be as not [hos me] having, and those weeping as not
weeping, and those rejoicing as not rejoicing, and those buying as
not possessing, and those using the world as not using it up. For
passing away is the figure of this world. But I wish you to be with
out care. " Hos me, "as not" : this is the formula concerning mes
sianic life and is the ultimate meaning of klesis. Vocation calls for
nothing and to no place. For this reason it may coincide with the
factical condition in which each person finds himself called, but
for this very reason, it also revokes the condition from top to bot
tom. The messianic vocation is the revocation of every vocation. In
this way, it defines what to me seems to be the only acceptable
vocation. What is a vocation, but the revocation of each and every
concrete factical vocation? This obviously does not entail substi
tuting a less authentic vocation with a truer vocation. According
24
to what norm would one be chosen over the other? No, the voca
tion calls the vocation itself: as though it were an urgency that
works it from within and hollows it out, nullifying it in the very
gesture of maintaining and dwelling in it. This, and nothing less
than this, is what it means to have a vocation, what it means to
live in messianic klesis.
At this point, the has me shows itself as a technical term essen
tial to Pauline vocabulary and must be understood in its specifici
ty on both the syntactic-grammatical and semantic levels. We
should take note that in the Synoptic Gospels, the particle has
serves an important function as an introductory term for mes
sianic cOlnparisons (for example, in Matt. 18:3: "unless you [man]
. . . become as the children [has ta paidia] "; or in the negative, in
Matt. 6:5: "thou shalt not be as the hypocrites") . What is the
meaning of this comparison, and what is the meaning of any com
parison in general? Medieval grammarians did not interpret the
comparative as an expression of identity or simple resemblance,
but rather, in the context of the theory of intensive magnitudes,
they interpreted the comparative as an (intensive or remissive) ten
sion that sets one concept against another. To use our previous
example, the concept man is thus set against the concept children
in a way that does not presume any identification between the two
terms. The Pauline has me seems to be a special type of tensor, for
it does not push a concept's semantic field toward that of another
concept. Instead, it sets it against itself in the form of the as not.
weeping as not weeping. The messianic tension thus does not tend
'
toward an elsewhere, nor does it exhaust itself in the indifference
between one thing and its opposite. The apostle does not say:
"weeping as rejoicing" nor "weeping as [meaning =] not weeping,"
but "weeping as not weeping." According to the principle of mes
sianic klesis, one determinate factical condition is set in relation to
itself-the weeping is pushed toward the weeping, the rejoicing
toward the rejoicing. In this manner, it revokes the factical condi
tion and undermines it without altering its form. The Pauline pas
sage on the has me may thus conclude with the phrase "paragei gar
to schema tou kosmou toutou [for passing away is the figure, the way
of being of this world]" (I Cor. 7:31) . In pushing each thing toward
The Second Day
25
itself through the as not, the messianic does not simply cancel out
this figure, but it makes it pass, it prepares its end. This is not
another figure or another world: it is the passing of the figure of
this world.
'6 An apocalyptic parallel to the Pauline has me is discernable in 4 Ezra
(or 2 Esdras) 16:42-46:
Qui vendit, quasi qui jUgiet;

et qui emit, quasi qui perditurus;
qui mercatur, quasi qui fructum non capiat;
et qui aedificat, quasi non habitaturus;
qui seminat, quasi qui non metet;
et qui vineam putat, quasi non vindemiaturus;
qui nubunt, sic quasi jilios non jtlCturi;
et qui non nubunt, sic quasi vidui.
[Let him that sells be as one who will fl e e;
let him that buys be as one who will lose;
let him that does business be as one who will not make a profit;
and let him that builds a house be as one who will not live in it;
let him that sows be as one who will not reap;
so also him that prunes the vines, as one who will not gather the grapes;
let them that marry, as those who will have no children;
and them that do not marry, as those who are widowed.]
A more attentive analysis nevertheless demonstrates that this seeming
closeness (has me, quasi non) veils profo und differences. Not only does
Ezra contrast different verbs while Paul almost always negates the same
verb, but, as Wolbert observes (Wolbert, 122) , Ezra distinguishes
between those verb tenses (present and future) that Paul merges into a
single present. In Paul, the messianic nullification performed by has me
is completely inherent to klesis and does not happen to it in a second
time (like it does in Ezra) , nor does it add anything to it. In this way, the
messianic vocation is a movement of immanence, or, if one prefers, a
zone of absolute indiscernability between immanence and transcen
dence, between this world and the future world. This will be important
in understanding the structure of messianic time.
From this perspective, the passage I Corinthians 7:29-32 can be read
as though it were implicitly opposed-perhaps even knowingly-to the
passage in Ecclesiastes (3:4-8) in which Qoheleth clearly separates the
times Paul melds together: ''A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance . . . a time to seek and a time to lose; a
time to keep, and a time to throw away . . . a time for war and a time
for peace. " Paul defines the messianic condition by simply superimpos
ing, in the has me, the times Qoheleth divides.
In order to render the messianic instance of an as not in every

klesis, the urgency revoking every vocation which
Chresis adheres to it, Paul uses a peculiar expression that gave
his interpreters much to ponder: chresai, "make use."
Let us now reread I Corinthians 7:21: ''Art thou called being a
slave? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it
rather." Contra Luther, who refers chresai to freedom and not, as
implied by the formulas ei kai ("but if") and mallon ("rather"), to
slavery, we would do well to hear in this line, as do the majority
of interpreters, "But if thou mayest be made free, use your klesis as
slave." Use : this is the definition Paul gives to messianic life in the
form of the as not. To live messianically means "to use" klesis; con
versely, messianic klesis is something to use, not to possess.
We may now make better sense of the meaning of the antithe
ses in verses 30-3I:"those buying as not possessing, and those
using [chromenoz] the world as not using it up [katachromenOl] ."
They make a n explicit reference t o property (dominium) under
Roman law: ius utendi et abutendi. (The meaning is confirmed in
the reading of the L manuscript: parachromenoi, to make use of, in
the technical-juridical sense.) Paul contrasts messianic usus with
dominium; thus, to remain in the calling in the form of the as not
means to not ever make the calling an object of ownership, only
of use. The hos me therefore does not only have a negative content;
rather, for Paul, this is the only possible use of worldly situations.
The messianic vocation is not a right, nor does it furnish an iden
tity; rather, it is a generic potentiality [potenza] that can be used
without ever being owned. To be messianic, to live in the Messiah,
signifies the expropriation of each and every juridical-factical
property (circumcised/uncircumcised; free/slave; man/woman)
under the form of the as not. This expropriation does not, howev
er, found a new identity; the "new creature" is none other than the
use and messianic vocation of the old (2 Cor. 5 :17: "So if anyone
The Second Day

is in the Messiah, the new creature [kaine ktisis] : everything old
has passed away; see, everything has become new") .
(!J It is against this backdrop of a messianic vocation as conceived by
Paul, that the Franciscan claim to a usus opposed to property acquires its
meaning. In their faith to a principle of altissima paupertas that went
against the prescriptions of the Curia, factions of spiritual Franciscans
were not limited in refusing all forms of property. With regard to the
Franciscans, and as Bartolus of Saxoferrato's juridical astuteness made
clear in his speaking of a novitas vitae to which civil law remained inap
plicable, they implicitly put forth the idea of a forma vivendi that was
entirely subtracted from the sphere of the law. Usus pauper is the name
they gave to this form of life's relation to worldly goods. Contrary to
those who believed that, in the final analysis, use could be referred back
to a "right of usage" (ius in usu, usum habere) and was therefore equiva
lent to a potestas licita utendi rem ad utilitatem suam (as is the case, for
example, in usufruct), Olivi confirms that "use and right are not the
same thing: we may use something without having a right over it or over
its usage, just as the slave uses his owner's thing without being an owner
or an usufructary" (Lambertini, 159) . 1 Even though the Pauline text most
often referred to by the Franciscans is I Timothy 6:8 ("if we have food
and clothing, we will be content with these") , many passages in the
quaestio di altissima paupertate on Olivi's distinction between usus and
dominium can be read as true and proper glosses of I Corinthians
7:30-31: "dicendum quod dare et emere et ceteri contractus," he writes,
"in apostolos erant solo nomine et solo ritu exteriori non autem in rei
veritate [One should say that when it comes to the apostles, the acts of
selling and buying and other types of contracts existed only in name and
as external ritual, but not in the reality (truth) of the thing]"
(Lambertini, 161) . In elaborating on the trend, already present in the
writings of Francis, to conceive of the order as a messianic community
and dissolve the rule that was conceived of as a form of life in the gospel
(the first rule begins haec est vita evangeli Jesu Christi), for Olivi as for
Angelo Clareno, what mattered was to create a space that escaped the
grasp of power and its laws, without entering into conflict with them yet
rendering them inoperative. As we shall see, the Pauline strategy with
regard to the law, of which our passage I Corinthians 7 on the as not
forms an integral part, may be read trom an analogous perspective.
I . Translator's note. Pierre Jean Olivi, 1248-98, philosopher of the Middle
Ages, who was an early leader of the "Spiritual" reform movement in the
Franciscan order.
'6 It will help us here to compare the Pauline as not with a juridical
institution as it permits for certain analogies. I am speaking of the insti
tution of the fictio legis, correctly defined as a creation without precedent
in Roman civil law (Thomas, 20) . The "fiction" (which should not be
confused with a presumption, which refers to an uncertain fact) consists
in substituting a truth with an opposite accession, from which juridical
consequences may be derived (jictio est in re certa contrariae veritatis pro
veritate assumptio) . Depending on whether the accession is negative or
positive, it expressed in the formula ac si-non / ac si, perinde ac si non /
perinde si [as if not / as if: j ust as if not / j ust as if] . One example of the
fictio legis is the Lex cornelia (81 B.C.E.), on the validity of the testimony
of Roman citizens who died in captivity. According to Roman law, cap
tivity implied the loss of status of free citizen and, therefore, the loss of
the capacity to make a testament. In order to remedy the patrimonial
consequences of this principle, the Lex cornelia established that in the
case of a Roman citizen who had fallen into slavery but made a testa
ment one had to act "as though he had not been made a prisoner" (or,
in the equivalent positive formulation, "as though he had died a free cit
izen, " atque se in civitate decessit) . The fictio consists in acting as if the
slave were a free citizen and in deducing from this fiction the validity of
a juridical act that would otherwise be null. This fiction of nonexistence
could be pushed at times to the extent of annulling a legal provision (ac
si lex lata non esset) or a particular juridical act so that, without ever con
testing its reality (pro injecto) , it could be considered as though it had
never happened.
In the as not, in a characteristic gesture, Paul pushes an almost exclu
sively j uridical regulation to its extreme, turning it against the law. What
does it actually mean to remain a slave in the form of the as not? Here,
the j uridical-factical condition invested by the messianic vocation is not
negated with regard to juridical consequences that would in turn vali
date a different or even opposite legal effect in its place, as does the jc
tio legis. Rather, in the as not, the juridical-factical condition is taken up
again and is transposed, while remaining juridically unchanged, to a
zone that is neither factual nor juridical, but is subtracted from the law
and remains as a place of pure praxis, of simple "use" ("use it rather!").
Factical klesis, set in relation to itself via the messianic vocation, is not
replaced by something else, but is rendered inoperative. (Further on, we
will see that Paul uses a specific term to signify this deactivation, ren
dering ineffective.) In this fashion, klesis is laid open to its true use. This
is the reason that the slave, as defined by Paul, is invested with a mes-
The Second Day
29
sianic vocation through the extraordinary hapax: hyper doulos, "super

slave, slave to the second power. "
In his footnote on the meaning of the term klesis in Paul, Weber

is forced to take into account a passage by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a passage that in Klesis and Class
his eyes constitutes the only text in Greek literature where klesis "corresponds at least approximately to the
Latin 'status' and our 'Stand' (in German)" (Weber, 57) . In this
passage, Dionysius derives the Latin word classis from the Greek
term klesis, which indicates that part of the citizenry called to arms
(klaseis kata tas Hellenikas kleseis paranomasantos). Even though
modern philologists doubt this etymology, what interests us is that
it allows us to relate messianic klesis to a key concept in Marxian
thought. It has often been noted that Marx was the first to substi
tute the Gallicism Klasse for the more common Stand (the term
that Hegel would still habitually use in his political philosophy) .
That this substitution has a strategic function for Marx is proven
in the fact that Hegelian doctrine of Stande is already under scruti
ny in his "Critique of the Hegelian Concept of the State"
(1841-42) . While the Marxian use of the term is not always con
sistent, what is certain is that Marx invests the concept of "class"
with a meaning that goes beyond his critique of Hegelian philos
ophy to designate the great transformation introduced into the
political fabric by the domination of the bourgeoisie. In fact, the
bourgeoisie represents the dissolution of all Stande, it is radically
Klasse and no longer Stand: "the bourgeois revolution undermined
all Stand and its privileges"; "By the mere fact that it is a class and
no longer an estate [Stand] , the bourgeoisie . . . " (Marx and
Engels, 5: 90) . So long as the system of the Stand remains intact,
what cannot be brought to light is the split produced by the divi
sion of labor between the personal life of each individual and the
life of that same individual inasrnuch as it is subsumed to a certain
condition of labor and the profession:
In the Stand (and even more in the tribe) this is as yet concealed: for
instance, a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a roturier [common
er] always a roturier, a quality inseparable from his individuality irre-
30
spective of his other relations. The difference between the private indi
vidual and the class individual, the accidental nature of the conditions
of life for the individual, appears only with the emergence of the class,
which is itself a product of the bourgeoisie. (Marx and Engels, 5: 78)
Class therefore represents the split between the individual and

his social figure, for his social figure is divested of the meaning
Stand covered it up with, now revealing itself as mere accident
(Zuflilligkeit) . The class, the proletariat, incarnates this split in itself
and lays bare, as it were, the contingency of each and every figure
and social condition; nevertheless, it alone is capable of abolishing
this division and of emancipating itself along with society as a
whole. It is helpful here to reread the famous passage in the
"Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" in
which Marx presents the redemptive function of the proletariat:
Where, then, is the positive possibility of a German emancipation?
Answer: In the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil
society which is not a class of civil society, an estate [Stand] which is the
dissolution of all estates [Stande] , a sphere which has a universal charac
ter by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no
particular wrong but wrong generally [das Unrecht schlechtin] is perpe
trated against it; which can no longer invoke a historical but only a
human title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the
consequences but in an all-round antithesis to the premises of the
German state; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without
emanCipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby eman
cipating all other spheres of society, which, tn a word, is the complete loss
of man [der vollige Verlust des Menschen] and hence can win itself only
through the complete rewinning of man. This dissolution of society as
a particular estate [Stand] is the proletariat. (Marx and Engels, 3: 186)
Benjamin's thesis, that the Marxian concept of a "classless society"

is a secularization of the idea of messianic time, is obviously per
tinent to us here. We will therefore attempt to take Dionysius's
etymology seriously for a short moment in bringing together the
function of messianic klesis for Paul with the function of class for
Marx. Just as class represents the dissolution of all ranks and the
emergence of a split between the individual and his own social
The Second Day
31
condition, so too does messianic klesis signify the hollowing out

and nullification of all juridical-factical conditions through the
form of the as not. From this perspective, the semantic indetermi
nacy between klesis calling and klesis-Beruf(which so preoccupied
Weber) can be read in terms of the arbitrariness marking each
social condition for the messianic and for Marx's proletariat. The
ekklesia, inasmuch as it is a community of messianic kleseis-that
is, inasmuch as it has become aware of this arbitrariness and lives
under the form of the as not and usage-permits more than just
one analogy with the Marxian proletariat. Just as he who is called
is crucified with the Messiah and dies to the old world (Rom. 6:6)
in order to be resuscitated to a new life (Rom. 8:n), so too is the
proletariat only able to liberate itself through autosuppression.
The "complete loss" of man coincides with his complete redemp
tion. (From this perspective, the fact that the proletariat ends up
being identified over time with a detenninate social class-the
working class that claims prerogatives and rights for itself-is the
worst misunderstanding of Marxian thought. What for Marx
served as a strategic identification-the working class as klesis and
as historical figure contingent on the proletariat-becomes, to the
opposite end, a true and proper substantial social identity that
necessarily ends in losing its revolutionary vocation.)
Marx's secularization of the messianic seems to me to be accurate and precise, up to this point. But can we really speak of a
"society without kleseis' in Paul, in the same way that Marx speaks
of a "classless society?" This is a legitimate question, for, if it is true
that factical kleseis abide as such ("Let every man abide"), then
they are nevertheless null and void of meaning ("Circumcision is
nothing, and the foreskin is nothing"; "he that is called in the
Lord, being a slave, is the Lord's freeman") . Several answers to this
question are, of course, possible. Two are actually prefigured in
Stirner's opposition between revolt (Emporung) and revolution
(Revolution), and by Marx's vast critique of Stirner in The German
Ideology. According to Stirner (or at least in Marx's presentation of
Stirner's thought), revolution consists in "a transformation of the
existing condition [Zustand] , or status, of the state or society;
32
hence it is a political or social act" that has the creation of new insti
tutions as its goal. Revolt, however, is "an uprising of individuals . . . without regard for the institutions that develop out of
it . . . . It is not a struggle against what exists, for if it prospers what
exists will collapse of itself; it is only the setting free of me from
what exists" (Marx and Engels, 5: 377) . Commenting on these
affirmations, Marx cites a passage from George Kuhlmann's book,
which has an unmistakenly messianic title, The New World; or, The
Kingdom of the Spirit upon Earth: "Ye shall not tear down nor
destroy that which ye find in your path, ye shall rather go out of
your way to avoid it and pass by it. And when ye have avoided it
and passed it by, then it shall cease to exist of itsel for it shall fi n d
no other nourishment" (Marx and Engels, 5: 539) . While Marx
succeeds in ridiculing Stirner's theses, they still represent one pos
sible interpretation, an interpretation which we will call the ethi
cal-anarchic interpretation of the Pauline as not. The other inter
pretation, Marx's, which does not distinguish revolt from revolu
tion, a political act from individual and egoistic need, runs into a
problem that is expressed by the aporia of the party, in the party's
being identical to class while simultaneously differing from it.
(This means that the Communist Party is not distinguishable from
the working class, except to the extent that it manages to grasp the
totality of the historical course of the working class.) If political
action (revolution) coincides perfectly with the egoistic act of the
singular individual (revolt) , then why is something like a party
even necessary? Lukacs's response to this problem in History and
Class Consciousness is well known: the problem of organization is
the problem of "class consciousness," for which the party is simul
taneously the universal bearer and catalyst. But in the end, this
amounts to affirming that party is distinct from class, like con
sciousness from man, with all the aporias implied. (As an Averoist
aporia, the party becomes something like the intellectual agent of
medieval philosophers, which has to carry over into actuality the
potentiality of mens' intellect. As a Hegelian aporia, it is expressed
in the question: what is consciousness, if to it is attributed the
magical power to transform reality . . . in itself?) That Lukacs ends
The Second Day
33
on this basis, by making "right theory" the decisive criterion for a

definition of the party, once again demonstrates the proximity
between the crux of this problem and that of messianic klesis. In
the same way, once the ekklesia, the community of messianic voca
tions, wishes to impart to itself an organization distinct from the
community while pretending to coincide with it, the problem of
correct doctrine and infallibility (that is, the problem of dogma)
becomes crucial.
A third interpretation is also possible. This is the anarchic
nihilistic interpretation attempted by Taubes in Benjamin's steps,
which plays on the absolute indiscernability between revolt and
revolution, worldly klesis and messianic klesis. One consequence of
this is the impossibility of distinguishing something like an aware
ness of the vocation from the movement of its tension and revo
cation in the as not. This interpretation has Paul's explicit affirma
tion on its side, when Paul says that he does not recall seizing hold
of himself: but only of being seized, and from this being seized,
straining forward toward klesis (Phil . 3 :12-13) . In this instance,
vocation coincides with the movement of the calling toward itself.
As you can see, many interpretations are possible, none of which,
may be correct. The only interpretation that is in no way possible
is the one put forth by the Church, based on Romans 13:1, which
states that there is no authority except from God, and that you
should therefore work, obey, and not question your given place in
society. What happens to the as not in all of this? Doesn't the mes
sianic vocation become reduced to a sort of mental reserve, or, in
the best of cases, to a kind of Marranism ante litteram?
'6 In the early I920S, in a course entitled "Introduction to the
Phenomenology of Religion," Heidegger read Paul and briefly com
mented on the passage I Corinthians 7:20-3I, which concerns klesis and
the has me. According to Heidegger, what is essential in Paul is not
dogma or theory, but factical experience, the way worldly relations are
lived ( Vollzug, the carrying out, the way of living) . For Paul, this way of
living is determined through the has me :
What is now at stake is a new fundamental comportment in regard to

the has me. This comportment has to be explicated according to the
34
structure of how it is carried out [ vollzugsmassig] . Whatever the mean

ing of real life, though this meaning is actual, it is lived has me, as ifnot
(als ob nicht) . . . . Noteworthy is I Corinthians 7:20. A person should
remain in the calling he is in, the genesthai is a menein. . . . Here, a par
ticular context of meaning is indicated: the relations to the surrounding
environment do not receive their meaning fi-om the significance of the
content toward which they are directed, but rather the reverse, from this
original carrying-out ( Vollzug), the relation and the meaning oflived sig
nificance is determined. Schematically said: something remains
unchanged but is radically changed nevertheless . . . . That which is
changed is not the meaning of the relation and even less so its content.
Thus, the Christian does not leave the world. If someone is called to be
a slave he should not fall into the tendency of believing that an increase
of his freedom could gain anything for his being. The slave should
remain a slave. It makes no difference what worldly significance he
might hold. The slave as a Christian is free of all bonds, as a Christian
the freeman will become a slave before God . . . . These directions of
meaning, toward the surrounding world, toward one's calling, and
toward that which one is, in no way determine the facticity of the
Christian. Nevertheless, these relations are there, they are maintained,
and thus first appropriated [zugeeignet] in an authentic manner.
(Heidegger 1995, II7-19)
This passage is important because in it we find more than just a simple
anticipation of what would become in Being and Time the dialectic of
the proper (Eigentlichkeit) and the improper ( Uneigentlichkeit) . What is
essential to this dialectic is that the proper and the amhentic are not
"something which floats above falling everydayness; existentially, it is
only a modified way in which such everydayness is seized upon"
(Heidegger 1962, 224) . This means that the authentic does not have any
other content than the inauthentic. It is through his reading of the
Pauline has me that Heidegger seems to first develop his idea of the
appropriation of the improper as the determining trait of human exis
tence. The Christian way of life is in fact not determined by worldly
relations or by their content, but by the way, and only by the way, in
which they are lived and are appropriated in their very impropriety.
Nonetheless, for Paul, what is at stake is not appropriation, but use, and
the messianic subject is not only not defined by propriety, but he is also
unable to seize hold of himself as a whole, whether in the form of an
authentic decision or in Being-toward-death.
The Second Day
35
Adorno ends Minima Moralia with an aphorism, in the form of

a seal that bears the messianic title Zum Ende, Tinale. " In
it, philosophy is defined as follows: The only philosophy As If
which can be responsibly practiced in face of despair is the
attempt to contemplate all things as they would present them
selves from the standpoint of redemption" (Adorno, 247) . Taubes
noted that when this text, which he found wonderful, but final
ly empty" (Taubes, 74), is compared with Benjamin and Karl
Barth, it shows itself to be nothing other than an aestheticization
of the messianic in the form of the as if This is why, Taubes adds,
the aphorism concludes with the thesis, The question of reality
or unreality of redemption becomes almost an indifIerent one." I
have often questioned whether this accusation of an aestheticiza
tion of the messianic"-which implies the renunciation of
redemption in exchange for the appearance of redemption-is
justified, given that the author of Aesthetic Theory pushes his mis
trust of beautiful appearances to the point of defining beauty as
der Bann iiber den Bann, the spell over spells. " Whatever the out
come, this point interests us for it allows us to bring into perspec
tive the distance separating the Pauline as not from every as ifand
from the als ob in particular. Beginning with Kant, the als ob rev
eled in its overwhelming success in modern ethics. You are famil
iar with Hans Vaihinger's book The Philosophy of '54s If " Even
though all the vices of Neo-Kantianism can already be found in it,
its main thesis on the centrality of fiction to modern culture-by
which he intends not only the sciences and philosophy but also
law and theology-is nevertheless right on the mark. Vaihinger
defines fiction (or the fictive activity" of thought) as the produc
tion and use of logical methods, which, with the help of accesso
ry concepts-where the improbability of any corresponding
objective is fairly obvious-seek to attain the objects of thought"
(Vaihinger, I7) . The problem that concerns us is, of course, the
status of being of this fiction," for which language is itself: so to
speak, the/archetype. It would be asking too much, however, to
expect Vaihinger to raise this issue. His reconstruction of the
importance of fiction-which one should not confuse with a
hypothesis!-in modern science is also of interest. But what truly

fails is the way in which he attempts to resolve the als ob with prac
tical reason and the Kantian conception of the idea with the focus
imaginarius by means of a kind of glorification of Pharisaism.
With a glaring absence of tact, Vaihinger Battens out Kant into the
likes of Friedrich Karl Forberg. Forberg was a mediocre theologian
to whom Vaihinger attributes the invention of a "religion of As
if," which supposedly has the merit of clearly presenting "at least
in its basic principles, Kant's As-if doctrine" (Vaihinger, 321) .
Unfortunately, Forberg is the inventor ante litteram of the social
democratic theory of the ideal as infinite progress. This theory will
be the very target of Benjamin's critique in his Theses on the
Philosophy ofHistory. Listen to why:
The kingdom of truth will almost certainly never come, and in the final
aim set before itself by the republic of scholars will, in all likelihood,
never be attained. Nevertheless, the unquenchable interest in truth that
burns in the breast of every thinking man will d'emand, for all eternity,
that he should combat error with all his power and spread truth in every
direction, i.e. behave exactly as if error must some day be completely
extirpated and we might look forward to a tim when truth will reign
undisputed sovereignty. This indeed is characteristic of a nature like that
of man, designed to be forever approximating to unattainable ideals . . . .
It is true that in all this you cannot scientifically demonstrate that it
must be so. Enough that your heart bids you act as if it were so.
(Vaihinger, 322)
There are still people today-although really only a small group,

who seem to have almost become respectable these days-who are
convinced that one can reduce ethics and religion to acting as if
God, the kingdom, truth, and so on existed. At the same time, the
as if has become a highly popular nosological figure verging on a
common condition. All of the people whose cases cannot be clear
ly ascribed to psychoses or neuroses are called as ifpersonalities, or
borderline personalities, be<:ause their "problem" consists in the-
fact that they have no problem, so to speak. They live as ifth.
were normal, as if the reign of normality existed, as if there were
"no problem" (this is the idiotic formula that they learn to repeat
The Second Day
37
on every occasion) , and this alone constitutes the origin of their

discomfort, their particular sensation of emptiness.
The fact remains that the question of the as if is infinitely more
serious than Vaihinger imagines it to be. Eight years before
Vaihinger's book, the far more interesting author Jules de Gaultier
published his masterpiece Bovarysm, in which the problem of fic
tion is restored to the rank to which it is due, that is, to the level
of the ontological. According to Gaultier, the "faculty of believing
one is different from what one is," which constituts the essence
of man, the essence of the animal who has no essence, is shown in
Flaubert's characters in a pathological way. Because he is not any
thing in himself: man can only be if he acts as if he were different
from what he is (or what he is not) . Gaultier was an avid reader of
Nietzsche and understood that every nihilism implied an as if,
making the problem lie in the way in which one dwells in the as
if The Nietzschean overcoming of nihilism has to contend with
this fundamental Bovarysm and know how to correctly seize hold
of it (hence the problem of the artist in Nietzsche) .
Let us turn now to Adorno and to Taubes's plaint that accuses
him of an aestheticization of the messianic. Were I to assume the
role of the accused in this trial, I would proceed by reading the
final aphorism of Minima Moralia with the beginning of Negative
lectics: "philosophy lives on because the moment to realize it
was missed. " The fact of having missed the moment of its realiza
tion is what obliges philosophy to indefinitely contemplate the
appearance of redemption. Aesthetic beauty is the chastisement,
so to speak, of philosophy's having missed its moment. Only in
this vein may we truly speak of an als ob in Adorno. This is why
aesthetic beauty cannot be anything more than the spell over
spells. There is no satisfaction in it, for the as if is the condemna
tion that the philosopher has already inflicted on himself
At a certain point in his work, Benjamin Whorf, a linguist
acutely aware of the way structures of language
Impotential
determine structures of thought, speaks of a special verbal category of the Hopi language, which
he defines as the category of "impotential." This modal category is

particularly difficult t o express in the languages Whorf calls SAE
languages (Standard Average European languages) and corre
sponds to a kind of "teleological ineffectiveness" (Whorf: 12I) . "If
a Hopi is reporting on a train of events in which a man ran away
from his pursuers but was eventually captured by them, he will use
the impotential, and say ta:qa as wa. ya 'the man ran away' (imply
ing that 'ran away' cannot here be held to mean 'escaped') . If the
man ran away and escaped, the statement would be simply ta: qa
wa. ya" (Whorf, 122) .
The whole of Adorno's philosophy is written according to
impotential meaning that the as ifcan only be taken as a warning
signal at the heart of this intimate modality of his thought.
Philosophy had been realizing itself: but the moment of its real
ization was rnissed. This omission is at one and the same time
absolutely contingent and absolutely irreparable, thus impoten
tial. Redemption is, consequently, only a "point of view." Adorno
could never even conceive of restoring possibility to the fallen,
unlike Paul, for whom "power [potenza] is actualized in weakness"
(2 Cor. I 2:9) . Despite appearances, negative dialectics is an
absolutely non-messianic form of thought, closer to the emotion
al tonality of Jean Amery than that of Benjamin.
You are familiar with the wicked joke Duns Scotus borrows
from Avicenna to prove contingency: "Those who deny con
tingency should be tortured until they admit that they could
also have not been tortured. " Jean Amery endured this terrible
proof, forced to acknowledge the senseless cruelty of cO,n tin
gency. From that moment on, what happened was absolutely
irreparable and resentment the only suitable emotional
response. In his extraordinary testimony Au-dela de La jaute et
de l'expiation (Beyond Guilt and Atonement)--the title of
which demonstrates a kind of ethical j ustification of resent
ment that finds a parallel in the subtitle of Minima Moralia,
"Reflections from D amaged Life [beschadigten Leben] , " like
wise betraying something akin to resentment-Amery
explains how the poems he had memorized by Holderlin lost
their ability to save and transcend the world. The "spell on
The Second Day
39
spells" may even aptly describe poetry; for Amery and Adorno ,
all gestures that could claim t o lift the spell are absent.
Is there something like a messianic modality that would allow us
to define its specificity in rdtion to Adorno's impotential and Amery's resentment? This modality, Exigency
which is rarely ever thematized as such in the history
of philosophy, is exigency. So essential to philosophy, it could even
be said to make it coincide with the possibility of philosophy itself
Let us attempt to inscribe this concept into the table of modal cat
egories alongside possibility, impossibility, necessity, and contin
gency. In the essay written in his youth on Dostoevsky's Idiot,
Benjamin says that the life of Prince Mishkin must remain unfor
gettable, even if no one remembers it. This is exigency. Exigency
does not forget, nor does it try to exorcise contingency. On the
contrary, it says: even though this life has been completely forgot
ten, there is an exigency that it remain unforgettable.
In "Primary Truths" (De veritatibus primis) , Leibniz defines the
relation between possibility and reality as follows: omne possibile
exigit existere, every possibility demands [esige] to exist, to become
real. Despite an unconditional respect for Leibriiz, I do not think
that this formulation is correct. In order to define what is truly an
exigency, we should invert the formulation nd write: omne exis
tens exigit possibilitatem suam, each existent demands [esige] its
proper possibility, it demands that it become possible. Exigency
consists in a relation between what is or has been, and its possi
bility. It does not precede reality; rather, it follows it.
I imagine Benjamin had something like this in mind when,
referring to the life of the idiot, he spoke
of the exigency to remain unforgettable.
The Unforgettable
This does not sirnply mean that something forgotten should now reappear in our memory and be
remembered. Exigency does not properly concern that which has
not been remembered; it concerns that which remains unforget
table. It refers to all in individual or collective life that is forgot
ten with each instant and to the infinite mass that will be forgot
ten by both. Despite the efforts of historians, scribes, and all sorts
40
o f archivists, the quantity o f what i s irretrievably lost i n the his

tory of society and in the history of individuals is infinitely greater
than what can be stored in the archives of memory. In every
instant, the measure of forgetting and ruin, the ontological squan
dering that we bear within ourselves far exceeds the piety of our
memories and consciences. But the shapeless chaos of the forgot
ten is neither inert nor ineffective. To the contrary, it is at work
within us with a force equal to that of the mass of conscious mem
ories, but in a different way. Forgetting has a force and a way of
operating that cannot be measured in the same terms as those of
conscious memory, nor can it be accumulated like knowledge. Its
persistence determines the status of all knowledge and under
standing. The exigency of the lost does not entail being remem
bered and commemorated; rather, it entails remaining in us and
with us as forgotten, and in this way and only in this way, remain
ing unforgettable.
From this stems the inadequacy in trying to restore to memory
what is forgotten by inscribing it in the archives and monuments
of history, or in trying to construct another tradition and history,
of the oppressed and the defeated. While their history may be
written with different tools than that of the dominant classes, it
will never substantially differ from it. In trying to work against
this confusion, one should remember that the tradition of the
unforgettable is not exactly a tradition. It is what marks traditions
with either the seal of infamy or glory, sometimes both. That
which makes each history historical and each tradition transmissible is the unforgettable nucleus that both bear within themselves
at their core. The alternatives at this juncture are therefore not to
forget or remember, to be unaware or become conscious, but
rather, the determining factor is the capacity to remain faithful to
that which having perpetually been forgotten, must remain unfor
gettable. It demands [ esige] to remain with us and be possible for
us in some manner. To respond to this exigency is the only histor
ical responsibility I feel capable of assuming fully. If, however, we
refuse to respond, and if, on both the collective and individual lev
els, we forgo each and every relation to the mass of the forgotten
The Second Day
41
that accompanies us like a silent golem, then it will reappear with

in us in a destructive and perverse way, in the form Freud called
the return of the repressed, that is, as the return of the impossible
as such.
What does all of this have to do with Paul? For Paul, the
redemption of what has been is the place of an exigency for the
messianic. This place does not involve a point of view from which
we could see a world in which redemption had taken place. The
coming of the Messiah means that all things, even the subjects
who contemplate it, are caught up in the as not, called and revoked
at one and the same time. No subject could watch it or act as ifat
a given point. The messianic vocation dislocates and, above all,
nullifies the entire subject. This is the meaning of Galatians 2:20,
"It is no longer I that live [zo ouketi ego] , but the Messiah living in
me." He lives in him precisely as the "no longer I," that dead body
of sin we bear within ourselves which is given life through the spir
it in the Messiah (Rom. 8 :n) . The whole of creation was subject
ed to caducity (mataiotes) , the futility of what is lost and decays,
but this is why it groans as it awaits redemption (Rom. 8:20-22).
The thing in the spirit to correspond with this creature's continu
ously lost lament is not a well-formed discourse able to calculate
and register loss, but "unspeakable groanings" (stenagmois alaletois)
(Rom. 8:26) . This is why the one who upholds faith in what is lost
cannot believe in any identity or worldly klesis. the as not is by no
means a fiction in the sense intended by Vaihinger or Forberg. It
has nothing to do with an ideal. The assimilation to what has been
lost and forgotten is absolute: " We are made as the filth of the
world, the offscouring of all things" (I Cor. 4:13) . Pauline klesis is
a theory of the interrelation between the messianic and the sub
ject, a theory that settles its differences once and for all with pre
sumed identities and ensuing properties. In this sense, that which
is not (ta me onta) is stronger than that which is.
Karl Barth's thesis that there is no place for the as if in the mes
sianic except when "hope is the Aufhebung of the as if," and that
"we now truly see . . . that which we nevertheless do not see"
(Barth, 298), is substantially correct, even if it lags behind Pauline
42
exigency. Just as Kafka intuited in his extraordinary parable on

parables ( " Von den Gleichnissen") , the messianic is the simultane
ous abolition and realization of the as if, and the subject wishing
to indefinitely maintain himself in similitude (in the as if) , while
contemplating his ruin, simply loses the wager. He who upholds
himself in the messianic vocation no longer knows the as if, he no
longer has similitudes at his disposal. He knows that in messianic
time the saved world coincides with the world that is irretrievably
lost, and that, to use BonhoeHer's words, he must now really live
in a world without God. This means that he may not disguise this
world's being-without-God in any way. The saving God is the
God who abandons him, and the fact of representations (the fact
of the as if) cannot pretend to save the appearance of salvation.
The messianic subject does not contemplate the world as though
it were saved. In Benjamin's words, he contemplates salvation only
to the extent that he loses himself in what cannot be saved; this is
how difficult it is to dwell in the calling.
C!) The term parable comes from the Greek parabole (Luther's transla
tion is Gleichnis) . This term serves such an
Parable and Kingdom important function in the Gospels in its
referring to Jesus' discourse, inasmuch as he
"speaks in parables" (Matt. 13:10), that from it (through the Latin
parabolare) comes the verb "to speak" in Romance languages (meaning
Provenal, French, and Italian; the Spanish hablar comes from fobulari).
The Hebrew precedent is mashal, meaning "comparison, proverb." An
implicit link between the structure of parable and the messianic king
dom is already found in Matthew 13:18-19, where "the word of the king
dom" (logos tes basileias) is what makes it necessary to speak in parables.
The parable of the sower explained in this passage treats the logos so that
the seed represents language itself (in the exegesis of Mark 4:13, "He that
soweth, soweth the logoS'). In the series of parables that follow, the mes
sianic kingdom is compared to a field in which good seed and weeds are
sown together; to a grain of mustard; to yeast; to treasure hidden in a
field; to a merchant in search of a pearl; to a net cast to the water. On
this subject Eberhard J tingel observed that "the kingdom of God comes
into language in the parable as a parable" (Jtingel, 29 5) , so that both the
difference and closeness between the kingdom of God and this world
The Second Day
43
'
become exposed together. In thy parable, the difference between the
signum and res significa thus tend to annul itself without completely dis
appearing. In this sense, we can say that like the parable of the sower in
Matthew, messianic parables ar always parables on language, that is, on
the representation of the kingdom in which not only are the kingdom
and the terms of the parable placed next to one another (para-ballo), but
the discourse on the kingdom and the kingdom itself is also placed side
by side, so that the understanding of the parable coincides with the logos
tes basileias. In the messianic parable signum and res significa approxi
mate each other because language itself is what is signified. This is
undoubtedly the meaning-and unavoidable ambiguity-of Kafka's
parable and of every parable in general. If what has to happen in the
parable is a passage beyond language, and if: according to Kafka, this is
only possible by becoming language ("if you only followed the parables,
you yourselves would become parables"), then everything hangs on the
moment and manner in which the as becomes abolished.
From this perspective, what is decisive is that Paul rarely ever uses para
bles in the technical sense, and that, as we have just seen, the as not
defining Paul's messianic klesis does not compare two distinct terms but
puts each being and each term in a tension with itself. The messianic
event, which, for Paul, has already happened with the resurrection, does
not express itself as a parable in a parable, but is present en to nun kairo,
as the revocation of every worldly condition, rHeased from itself to allow
for its use.
The Third Day
Aphorismenos
Aphorismenos is the past participle of aphorizo and means "sep

arated. " Jerome translates it as segregatus. This term is clearly an
important one for Paul given that, already in the Letter to the
Galatians, he uses a form of this verb to characterize his vocation:
"he who separated me from the womb of my mother, and having
called me through his grace" (Gal. 1:15) . This term nevertheless
points to an unavoidable problem: how is it possible that Paul,
who proclaims universalism and announces the messianic end of
all separation between Jews and pagans, refers to himself as one
who is "separated"? In Ephesians 2:14-15, Paul says, word for word,
that the Messiah "has made both one and has broken down the
wall of separation [to mesotoichon tou phragmouJ ." This phrase is
powerful, for it puts a fundamental point of Judaism into ques
tion. (The author of the letter of Aristeas, who clearly was not a
fanatic, defines Jews as follows: "Our lawgiver . . . fenced us about
with impregnable palisades and with walls of iron, to the end that
we should mingle in no way with any of the other nations [ethne] "
(Aristeas, 157) . The messianic announcement means that these
walls have come down, that a division no longer exists between
men, or between men and God. Why then does Paul continue to
define himself as "separated"? Did he not, at the moment of the
meeting at Antioch, severely reproach Peter precisely because he
was "separated" (aphorizen heauton) from the non-Jews (Gal.
44
The Third Day
45
2:I2) ? Separating oneself means questioning the "truth of the mes

sianic proclamation" (ten aletheian tou euaggeliou) to the point
that Paul cannot refrain from intervening: "If you, though a Jew,
live like a non-Jew, and not like a Jew [ethnikos kai ouchi
Ioudaikos] , how can you compel the non-Jews to live like Jews
[Ioudaizein]" (Gal. 2:14) ? He nevertheless cites Isaiah 52:n else
where: "Come out from them, and separate yourselves [aphoris
thete]" (2 Cor. 6:17) .
To understand the exact meaning of the term aphorismenos thus
entails correctly situating a fundamental problem, that of univer
salism, or Paul's supposed universalism and the "Catholic" voca
tion of the messianic community. But first, one observation con
cerning Paul's autobiography. Paul's autobiography is present in
the letters not only in a direct fashion, as in the long excursus in
the Letter to the Galatians, but also indirectly, through allusions
that one has to be able to recognize. The term aphorismenos is one
of these hidden allusions. In defining himself as "separated," Paul
evokes his past as a "then," a pote, that must have still been burn
ing in his memory: "then . . . I savagely persecuted God's commu
nity" (Gal. 1:13) . Aphorismenos is nothing more than the Greek
translation of the Hebrew term parush or the Aramaic perish, that
is, "Pharisee" (the Greek calque pharisaios comes from the
Aramaic) . In the Letter to the Philippians, when he lays claim to
his Judaism with regard to the circumcised, Paul says that he was
"circumcised on the eighth day, a descendant of the people of
Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to
the law, a Pharisee [kata nomon Pharisaios]" (Phil. 3 : 5) .
Paul was therefore a Pharisee, one who was separated. Whatever
the origins of this sect-or rather, of this Jewish
movement-that historians trace back to the Pharisee
Hasidim of the Maccabean era, Pharisees were certainly separated ones who, in distinguishing themselves from the
masses while being essentially laypeople, insisted on scrupulous
attention to rules of sacerdotal purity. This is how they "separate"
themselves-not only and as much from the pagans, but also and
above all from the ' am-ha'aretz, the people of the earth, meaning,

the ignorant farmers who do not follow the law. (In this sense, in
Kafka's apologue "Before the Law," the "peasant" can be read as an
'am-ha'aretz, and the gatekeeper as a parush, a Pharisee.) Pharisees
became a dominant class in Palestine around the end of the first
century B.C.E., and if Paul says, "as to the law, a Pharisee" (Phil.
3 : 6) , it is because the Pharisaic ideal constituted an integral code
of law in followers' lives. Pharisaism distinguished itself from
other factions in Judaism in that, according to the Pharisees, the
law did not solely consist in the Torah in the strict sense, that is,
as written law, but also as the oral Torah, that is, in tradition con
ceived as a "dividing wall" or a "fence" surrounding the Torah that
prevents contact with any impurity.
In defining himself as aphorismenos, one who is "separated,"
Paul thus alludes, in an ironic, albeit cruelly ironic fashion to his
separation of times past, his segregation as a Pharisee. He refers to
it and negates it in the name of another separation that is no
longer a separation according to the nomos, but a separation
according to the messianic proclamation (eis euaggelion theou).
This is how one should read the phrase to mesoitochon tou phrag
mou in the passage just cited from Ephesians 2:14, which is trans
lated as "the wall of separation," but literally means "the dividing
wall of the fence." This is an overt allusion to the "dividing parti
tion" and to the fence surrounding the Torah that constituted the
Pharisaic ideal. The wall that the messianic proclamation brings
down, the one announced in aphorismenos, is the same wall that
the Pharisee had once maintained around the Torah in order to
'
protect it from the 'am-ha'retz and the goyim, the non-Jews.
If this is true, meaning that if the separation in the messianic
aphorism resumes and divides the separation of the parush, then
aphorismenos implies something like a separation to the second
power, a separation which, in its very separateness, divides and
traverses the divisions of Pharisaic laws. But this also rneans that
the messianic aphorism partakes in a complex structure that we
must actually grasp if we want to understand correctly the mean
ing of the separations traced out by Paul in his letters. All of
Paul's grapplings with the law, and not just in the Letter to the
Romans, are actually scanned by a series of divisions, among
The Third Day
47
which the division sarx /pneuma, "flesh / breath," occupies a cen

tral position. What is the meaning and the strategic function of
this division, a division that Paul actively sets against the parti
tions of the law?
Paul actually starts by stating that the law operates primarily in
instituting divisions and separations. In so doing, he seems to take
the etymological meaning of the Greek term nomos seriously, since
he uses the term to designate the Torah as well as laws in general,
in that nomos derives from nemo, "to divide, to attribute parts." As
you may recall, in the beginning of the passage on vocation in I
Corinthians 7:17, in his referring to the varying conditions in
which men find themselves divided, Paul says hos emerisen ho
kyrios, "in the part which the Lord has attributed to him." In addi
tion, in Ephesians 2:14, the "wall of separation" that the Messiah
abolished coincides with the nomos ton en tolon, the "law of the
commandments," which divided men into "foreskin" and "cir
cumcised."
The principle of the law is thus division. The fundamental par
tition of Jewish law is the one between
Jews and non-Jews, or in Paul's words, The Divided People
between Ioudaioi and ethne. In the
Bible, the concept of a "people" is in fact always already divided
between am and goy (plural goyim) . Am is Israel, the elected peo
ple, with whom Yahweh formed a berit, a pact; the goyim are the
other peoples. The Septuagint translates am with laos and goyim
with ethne. (A fundamental chapter in the semantic history of the
term "people" thus begins here and should be traced up to the
contemporary usage of the adjective ethnic in the syntagma ethnic
conflict. It would be equally interesting to question the reason why
the Septuagint refrains from using that other Greek term for a
people, the term that enjoys such prestige in our philosophical
political tradition: the demos. In both cases, it is plain to see that
the term "people" is always already divided, traversed by an origi
nary theological-political fault.)
Even if the whole of the 'am is called Israel, different denomi
nations are nevertheless also possible. The term yehudi (Greek

Ioudaios), which originally designated the inhabitants o f the king
dom of Juda, progressively extends to all the members of the am
(above all when the non-Jews speak of it) . There is also the terrn
ivri (the Greek is Hebraios) , which initially had a juridical over
tone to it, and in rabbinical literature specifically designated
lashon ha-qodesh, Hebrew as a holy tongue, but was then extend
ed to the whole of Israel. In Paul's case, he uses all three terms:
Israel, Hebraios, Ioudaios. One could say that the name itself
divides, that the law constituting Israel as am is the principle of
incessant division.
The fundamental division of the law is, nevertheless, that of
Jews and non-Jews, which Paul crudely renders in the antithesis
circumcision/foreskin. Prophets may of course direct their message
toward all peoples, but even in Isaiah 49 : 6, the "slave of the lord"
whom the prophet announces is defined as berit am, a "covenant"
of Israel, and or goyim, simply meaning a "light" for the non-Jews.
This oppositive sense of the term ethne is found as many as twen
ty-three times in Paul. The same opposition is also rendered in the
letters via the terms IoudaioslHellen (the non-Jews whom Paul was
involved with were Greeks, or people who spoke Greek) . This is
why, in Romans II:I3, Paul defines himself as ethnon ap osto los,
apostle of the non-Jews, and in Ephesians 3:1 he can say, "1, Paul,
a prisoner of the Messiah for you ethne. " And, when, in the dis
cussion with Peter in Antioch, which, contrary to what Jerome
thought, was absolutely not a farce, Paul says, "Why do you want
to make the ethne live like Jews [ioudaizein] ?" we should read this
accordingly.
The problem then becomes the following: what is Paul's strate
gy when confronting this fundamental division? How, from the '
messianic perspective, does he manage to neutralize the partitions
of the law? This problem obviously cannot be separated from the
Pauline critique of the law, which is at the center of the Letter to
the Romans. The aporias of the Pauline critique of the law culmi
nate in the messianic theologoumena of Romans 3:31 ("Do we then
abolish the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we
uphold the law") and 10:4 ("the Messiah is the telos of the law" ) .
The Third Day
49
We will attempt to unfold these aporias, which are cosubstantial

with the messianic event, by commenting on the word euaggelion
at a later moment. The Messiah is actually the instance par excel
lence for a conflict with the law. The Kabbalists will resolve this
conflict by distinguishing two aspects of the Torah: the Torah of
Beriah, the law of creation, the law of the world that is not yet
redeemed, and the Torah ofAtzilut, the law that precedes creation,
which the Messiah must restore. For now we should note that in
the Letter to the Rornans, the partitions of the nomos traverse even
the interior of man, which is divided as it undergoes the law's
effect ("I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want,
this I do"; Rom. 7:19) . But even the law divides itself, for he who
is divided by the law sees in his members "another law" that strug
gles against the "law of the breath of life" (Rom. 7:23) .
How does Paul tackle these divisions? And how should one
come to understand the messianic law of the breath? Should one
perhaps oppose one law to another law, a law that is similar to the
preceding one but more universal? And what happens to the law's
fundamental partitions in the messianic?
Confronting these partitions, Paul puts another division to
work, one that does not coincide with the preceding ones but that
is not exterior to them either. The messianic aphorism works n
the divisions of the law themselves, imposing upon them a further
cut. This cut is that of sarx /pneuma, the cut of "flesh/breath."
Let us take the fundamental division of the law to be that of the
Jew/non-Jew. The criteria for how this division works is both clear
(circumcised/foreskin) and exhaustive, for it divides all "men" into
two subsets, without leaving a remainder [ resto] or remnant. Paul
cuts this division in two via a new division, that of the
flesh/breath. This partition does not coincide with that of the
Jew/non-Jew, but it is not external to it either; instead, it divides
the division itself.
In the German edition of Benjamin's Passagenwerk, line N. 7a,
I, we read, "a line divided according to
the cut of Apollo [nach dem apoll ( i ) nis- The Cut of Apelles
chen Schnitt] " that "perceives its own

division as beyond itself " The sentence does not make sense, for
there is never any "cut of Apollo" in Greek mythology or else
where. The problem of course lies in the misreading of apellnis
chen Schnitt (the "i" is by no means necessary) , which is actually
the "cut of Apelles." Some of you will recall the story Pliny men
tions concerning a contest between Apelles and Protogenes. The
classical tradition abounds with these kinds of artistic upsets (X
manages to fool the birds that come to eat the grapes he has just
painted, while Y fools the painter himself in painting a veil that
the painter tries to lift, etc.) . Here, however, the contest is about a
line. Protogenes draws such a fine line that it seems not to have
been drawn by the paintbrush of any human being. But Apelles,
using his brush, divides his rival's line in two with an even finer
line, cutting it lengthwise in half
In this sense, the messianic aphorism can be seen as a cut of
Apelles that does not have any object proper to itself but divides
the divisions traced out by the law. The subset "Jews" is thus divid
ed into "apparent Jews," or Jews according to the flesh
(Ioudaios . . . en to phanero en sarkz), and "hidden Jews, " or Jews
according to the breath (en to crypto loudaios . . . en pneumati ;
Rom. 2:28-29) . The same thing happens to the non-Jews (even if
Paul does not explicitly say so) . This means that "the [true] Jew is
not the apparent one and that [true] circumcision is not that of
the flesh" (Rom. 2:28-29) . Under the effect of the cut of Apelles,
the partition of the law (Jew/non-Jew) , is no longer clear or
exhaustive, for there will be some Jews who are not Jews, and ome
non-Jews who are not non-Jews. Paul states it clearly: "Not all of
those of Israel are Israel" (Rom. 9 :6) ; and, further on, citing
Hosea, "I will call my own people a non-people" (Rom. 9:25) . This
means that messianic division introduces a remnant [ resto] into
the law's overall division of the people, and Jews and non-Jews are
constitutively "not all."
This "remnant" is not any kind of numeric portion or substan
tial positive residue, that would entail a whole homogeneous to
the former divisions, in itself harboring the capacity to surpass dif
ferences without our understanding precisely how. To the con
trary, from an epistemological point of view, it consists in cutting
51
The Third Day
the polarized Jew/non-Jew partition so that one could move on to

a logic of an intuitionist sort, or better yet, a logic like that of
Nicholas of Cusa in his De non aliud, in which the AInon-A oppo
sition admits a third term which then takes on the form of a dou
ble negation: non non-A. There are grounds for evoking this log
ical paradigm in Paul's text, especially in the passage I Corinthians
9:20-23, in which he defines his position with regard to the divi
sion Jew (hypo nomon, "under the law") / non-Jew (anomoi, "with
out law") according to the unusual expression, "as without law,
not without the law of God, but in the law of the Messiah" (hos
anomos, me on anomos theou all'e nnomos christou) . He who keeps
himself in the messianic law is not-not in the law.
The division of the law into Jew/non-Jew, in the law / without
law, now leaves a remnant on either side, which cannot be defined
either as a Jew, or as a non-Jew. He who dwells in the law of the
Messiah is the non-non-Jew. This works, more or less, according
to the following schema:
JEW
Jew according
to the breath
Jew according
to the flesh
NON-NON-JEW
NON-JEW
non-Jew
according
to the breath
non-Jew
according
to the flesh '
NON-NON-JEW
What is significant in this "division of divisions"? Why do I

think that the Pauline aphorism is so important? First and fore
most, because it forces us to think about the question of the uni
versal and particular in a completely new way, not only in logic,
but also in ontology and politics. You are aware that Paul was
always considered to be the apostle of universalism and that the
Church, in intending to found itself on his doctrine, claimed for
itself the title "Catholic," meaning universal. Hence the subtitle of
a recent book on Paul, The Foundation of Universalism, which tries
to demonstrate precisely how "a universal thought, proceeding on
the basis of the worldly proliferation of alterities (the Jew, the
Greek, women, men, slaves, free men, and so on) produces a
52
Sameness and an Equality (there is n o longer either Jew, o r Greek,

and so on)" (Badiou, 109) . But is this really accurate? And is it
really possible to think a universal as "the production of the Same"
in Paul?
The messianic cut of Apelles clearly never adds up to a univer
sal. The Jew "according to the breath" is not a universal, because
he cannot be a predicate of all Jews; in the same way, the "non-Jew
according to the flesh" cannot be a universal either. But this does
not mean that the non non-Jews can only be part of the Jews or
the non-Jews. Rather, they represent the impossibility of the Jews
and goyim to coincide with themselves; they are something like a
remnant between every people and itself, between every identity
and itself. At this point one can measure the distance that sepa
rates the Pauline operation from modern universalism-when
something like the humanity of man, for example, is taken as the
principle that abolishes all difference or as the ultimate difference,
beyond which further division is impossible. This is how, in the
book just referred to, Badiou is able to think about Paul's univer
salism as "benevolence with regard to customs and opinions" or as
an "indiHerence that tolerates differences," which then becomes
"that which must be traversed in order for universality itself to be
constructed" (Badiou, 98-99) .
Despite the legitimacy of concepts such as "tolerance" or
"benevolence," which in the end, pertain to the State's attitude
toward religious conflict (one can see here how those who declare
their wanting to abolish the state are often unable to liberate
themselves from a point of view of the state) , these concep ts are
certainly not messianic. For Paul, it is not a matter of "tolerating"
or getting past differences in order to pinpoint a sameness or a
universal lurking beyond. The universal is not a transcendent
principle through which differences may be perceived-such a
perspective of transcendence is not available to Paul. Rather, this
"transcendental" involves an operation that divides the divisions
of the law themselves and renders them inoperative, without ever
reaching any final ground. No universal man, no Christian can be
found in the depths of the Jew or the Greek, neither as a principle
The Third Day
53
nor as an end; all that is left is a remnant and the impossibility of

the Jew or the Greek to coincide with himself. The messianic
vocation separates every klesis from itself: engendering a tension
within itself: without ever providing it with some other identity;
hence, Jew as non-Jew, Greek as non-Greek.
In referring to a book by Robert Antelme, Blanchot once wrote
that man is the indestructible that can be infinitely destroyed
(Blanchot, 30) . Think about the paradoxical structure implied by
this fonnulation. If man, the indestructible, can be infinitely
destroyed, this means that there is no human essence to destroy or
recover, that man is a being who is infinitely missing himself and
is already divided against himself. But if man is that which may be
infinitely destroyed, this also means that something other than this
destruction, and within this destruction, remains, and that man is
this remnant.
You see why it makes no sense to speak of universalism with
regard to Paul, at least when the universal is thought of as a prin
ciple above cuts and divisions, and the individual as the ultimate
limit of each division. In this sense, there is neither beginning nor
end in Paul, only Apelles' cut, the division of division, and then a
remnant.
The theory of the remnant developed by Paul m Romans '
n:I-26 should be read in this light, precisely when
Remnant
he takes his formulation of the problem of the
am/goyim, Jew/non-Jew to an extreme. He begins
by asking, "Has God rejected his people?" and quickly follows
with the answer, "By no means!" And he makes a claim about his
Judaism in the flesh: "I myself am an Israelite, from the seed of
Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." God did not reject his cho
sen people, but, as was the case in the time of Elijah, in facing the
prophet's accusations against Israel, he reserved seven thousand
men for himself, "so that, in the time of the now [en to nyn kairo,
the technical expression of messianic time] a remnant is produced,
chosen by grace" (Rom. rr: 5 ) .
In Paul's Greek, "remnant" is leimma. Paul does not invent this
concept, but, characteristically, he is merely reviving it from the
54
prophetic tradition. The term is a technical one in the language of

the prophets and performs an important function in Isaiah, Amos,
and particularly in Micah. The corresponding terms in Hebrew
are shear and she'erit (in the Septuagint, kataleimma and hypoleim
ma) . Something like a paradox is found in these prophets, for they
address themselves to the elected people, to Israel, as though they
were a whole, while announcing that only a remnant will be saved.
The exemplary passage, which Paul even cites, is the messianic
prophecy of Isaiah 10:20-22 "On that day, the remnant of Israel,
the survivors of the house of Jacob, will no more lean on the one
who struck them . . . . A remnant will return, the remnant of
Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people, oh Israel, were
like the sand of the sea, only a remnant will return." The idea of a
messianic remnant is already contained in what Yahweh
announces to Isaiah as the son's name: Shear Yashuv, literally
meaning "a remnant will return." (Return and salvation are so
closely bound together in Judaism that the Septuagint translates
yashuv as sothesetai, "will be saved.") Messianic salvation, the work
of the divine, has as its remnant a subject: "hom Jerusalem a rem
nant shall go out, from Mount Zion a band of survivors" (Isa.
37:32) . But a remnant even figures in matters of election and call
ing: Isaiah cries, "Listen to me, house of Jacob and all the remnant
of Israel" (Isa. 46:3), words that reverberate deeply in the Pauline
text, "you, seized in your mother's wornb, taken from your moth
er's breast." In the same manner, in Micah 4:7, the messianic
proclamation pertains to a remainder: "In that day, says the Lord,
I will assemble the lame, and gather those who have been driven
away, and those whom I have afflicted. Of the lame I will make a
remnant, of those cast off a strong nation. " Even Amos, who
announces the entire destruction of God's people, nevertheless
aporetically proposes a remnant: "Hate evil and love good. Follow
justice at the gate, it may be that the eternal, the god of hosts, will
take pity on the remnant of Jacob" (Amos 5 :15) .
How should we conceive of this "remnant of Israel"? The prob
lem is misunderstood from the very start when the remnant is
taken as a numeric remainder or portion, as is the case with sever-
The Third Day
55
a l theologians who understand i t as that portion o f the Jews who

survived the eschatological catastrophe, or as a kind of bridge
between ruin and salvation. It is even more misleading to interpret
the remnant as outright identical to Israel, in the sense of its being
an elected people that survived the final destruction of peoples. A
closer reading of the prophetic texts shows that the remnant is
closer to being a consistency or figure that Israel assumes in rela
tion to election or to the messianic event. It is therefore neither the
all, nor a part of the all, but the impossibility for the part and the
all to coincide with themselves or with each other. At a decisive
instant, the elected people, every people, will necessarily situate itself
as a remnant, as not-all.
This is the messianic-prophetic concept of the remnant that
Paul resumes and develops, and this is also the ultimate meaning
of his aphorism, his division of divisions. For him, the remnant no
longer consists in a concept turned toward the future, as with the
prophets; it concerns a present experience that defines the mes
sianic "now. " "In the time of the now a remnant is produced [gego
nen] . "
An unusual dialectic i s found here, a dialectic that brings three

elements together without any mediation. First there is the all (pas, panta) . The All and the Part
Taubes has already noted that the
entire First Letter to the Corinthians is constructed in the form of
a fugue around the word pas (in the Greek Bible, the term pas is
unquestionably the most frequently used term after kyrios, "Lord,"
with circa seven thousand occurrences) . In Paul, pas, "all," is the
expression proper to the eschatological telos. At the end of time,
God will be "all in all" (panta en pasin; I Cor. 15:28-this formu
la, which in itself unites both its summational and distributive
meanings, will be used again by the pantheists) . In this same sense,
Paul specifies that, in the end, "all of Israel will be saved" (Rom.
II:26) .
Next is the part ( meros) that defines the secular world, the time
under the law. Everything here is divided, everything is ek merous,
"in part. " Remember the famous passage I Corinthians 13 :9-13,

"For we know only i n part [ek merousJ , and we prophecy only in
part; but when fulfillment comes [to teleion] , that which is in part
will be made inoperative . . . now we see in a mirror, in enigmas,
but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I
will know fully as I am fully known. Now faith, hope, and love
dwell [menei] in these three; and the greatest of these is love."
Finally, the messianic remnant, which does not go beyond the
part, but, as we have seen, results from the part's division, is inti
mately linked to this division. In this sense, the fact that the mes
sianic world is nothing other than the secular world, means that it
is still in some way partial. And in 1 Corinthians 12:27, Paul clear
ly reminds the members of the messianic community of this: "You
are the body of Christ and members in part [ek merous] . "
Nevertheless, the rernnant i s precisely what prevents divisions
from being exhaustive and excludes the parts and the all from the
possibility of coinciding with themselves. The remnant is not so
much the object of salvation as its instrument, that which proper-
ly makes salvation possible. In Romans n:n-26, Paul describes the
remnant's soteriological dialectic with clarity. The "diminution"
(hettema) that makes Israel a "part" and a remnant is produced for
the salvation of the ethne, the non-Jews, and foreshadows its
pleroma, its fullness as the all, since, in the end, when the pleroma
of the people will have come, then "all of Israel will be saved." The
remnant is therefore both an excess of the all with regard to the
part, and of the part with regard to the all. It functions as a very
peculiar kind of soteriological machine. As such, it only concerns
messianic time and only exists therein. In the telos, when God will
be "all in all," the messianic remnant will not harbor any particu
lar privilege and will have exhausted its meaning in losing itself in
the pleroma (1 Thess. 4:15: "we, who remain alive, unto the com
ing of the Lord shall not overtake them which are asleep" ) . But in
the time of the now, the only real time, there is nothing other than
the remnant. This does not properly belong either to an eschatol
ogy of ruin or salvation, but rather, to use Benjamin's words, it
belongs to an unredeemable, the perception of which allows us to
reach salvation. The only possible meaning of Kafka's aphorism, in
The Third Day
57
which there is salvation, but "not for us, " is found here. As rem
nant, we, the living who remain en to nyn kairo, make salvation
possible, we are its "premise" (aparche; Rom. n:r6) . We are already
saved, so to speak, but for this reason, it is not as a remnant that
we will be saved. The messianic remnant exceeds the eschatologi
cal all, and irremediably so; it is the unredeemable that makes sal
vation possible.
If I had to mark out a political legacy in Paul's letters that was
immediately traceable, I believe that the concept of the remnant
would have to play a part. More specifically, it allows for a new
perspective that dislodges our antiquated notions of a people and
a democracy, however impossible it may be to completely
renounce them. The people is neither the all nor the part, neither
the majority nor the minority. Instead, it is that which can never
coincide with itself, as all or as part, that which infinitely remains
or resists in each division, and, with all due respect to those who
govern us, never allows us to be reduced to a majority or a minority. This remnant is the figure, or the substantiality assumed by a
people in a decisive moment, and as such is the only real political
subject.
'6 The messianic concept of the remnant undoubtedly permits more
than one analogy to be made with the Marxian proletariat-in the lat
ter's noncoinciding with itself as class and in its necessarily exceeding the
state and social dialectic of Stande-which underwent "no particular
wrong but wrong absolutely [das Unrecht schlechtin] ." This concept also
enables a better understanding of whatj)eleuze calls a "minor people,"
eople that is cOflstiJllt:iyIY PQsitioned as a minority. (This notion
most certainly has older origins, since I remember that Jose Bergamin,
havng lived through the Spanish civil war, used to say, almost like an
4;gio, el pueblo es siempre minoria, "the people is always a minority. ")
'
In a somewhat analogous fashion, in a
interview with Jacques
a "nondemarcatable element
Ranciere, Foucault spoke of the
absolutely irreducible to power relationships, not simply external to
their limit in some manner: "The pleb does not exist
in all probability, but there is something of the pleb, nevertheless (il y a
de la plebe) . Something of pleb is in bodies, in spirits, in individuals, in
the proletariat, but, with each dimension, form, energy, and irreducibil-
'l1iU

ity, differs i n each and every instance. This part of pleb does not repre
sent some exteriority with regard to power relationships as much as it
represents their limit, their ruin, their consequence" (Foucault, 421) .
Years' later, Ranciere himself returned to this Foucauldian concept so as
to develop it into the concept of a people, understood as the "part of
those who have no part," meaning a sup_ernumerary party, the bearer of
a wrong which establishes democracy as a "community of dispute." But
everything here depends on how one interprets "wrong" and "dispute."
'
If democratic dispute is understood for what it truly is, that is, the pos
sibility of stasis or of civil war, then this definition is pertinent. If, how
ever, following what Ranciere seems to think, the wrong for whom the
people are the cipher is not "absolute" (as it still was in Marx), but, by
defi n ition, can be "processed" (Ranciere, 39) , then the line between
democracy and its consensual, or postdemocratic, counterfeit (which
Ranciere goes so far as to overtly critique) tends to dissolve.
The Fourth Day

Apostolos
The term aposto los, which, according to our reading, grammat

ically depends upon aphorismenos, harbors a particular significance
for Paul. Apostolos defines the specific function of aphorismenos not
only in the greeting of almost all the Letters but elsewhere as well.
The meaning, which comes from the Greek verb apostello, to send
forth, harbors no ambiguity. The apostle is an emissary, and in this
case, not an emissary of men but an emissary of the Messiah Jesus
and the will of God for the messianic announcement. (This the
case in the two Letters to the Corinthians and the Letters to the
Galatians, Ephesians, and the Colossians.) The Hebrew ante
cedent invoked in lexicons, the shaliab, is essentially a juridical
notion. The shaliab is a mandatory, a man sent on a specific
_assignment. Whatever the nature of this assignment (a contract, a
marriage, etc.), the rabbinic maxim ''A man's emissary is like the
man himself," is applicable to the shaliab. (As with Roman law,
the effects of mandatory's acts fall on the mandatory.) In Judaism,
this originally juridical figure acquires a religious meaning (to the
extent that one can make a distinction in Judaism between reli, gion and the law) ; the communities of Palestine thus sent
shelubim to those of the Diaspora. Nevertheless, even when the
assignment had a religious character to it, it was always a specific
assignment and bore a figure without much pretense; hence the
humor of the joke that circulated centuries later concerning the
Sabbatai Sevi: "he left a shaliab and returned a mashiab."
59
60
Why does Paul define himself as an apostle and not, for exam
ple, a prophet? What difference is there between apostle and
prophet? Paul himself plays on this difI<:rence, quickly altering a
citation froIn Jeremiah in Galatians 1:15-16. When Jeremiah says,
"1 made you a prophet at your mother's breast," Paul, having just
defined himself as an "emissary [apostolosJ not from human beings
nor through a human being, but through Jesus Messiah and God
the father," cancels out "prophet" and simply writes, "who from
my mother's womb had set me apart."
You are undoubtedly familiar with the importance of the
prophet, the nabi, in Judaism and in Antiquity in general.
Nabi The persistent legacy of this figure in Western culture is
less well known; it extends to the threshold of modernity,
where it does not completely vanish. Aby Warburg marked out
Nietzsche and Jacob Burckhardt as two opposite kinds of nabi, the
former turned toward the future, and the latter toward the past; and
1 remember that Michel Foucault, in his lecture on February I, 1984,
at the College de France, delineated four figures of "veridiction" or
truth-telling in Antiquity: the prophet, the sage, the expert, and the
parrhesiast, tracing out their legacy in the history of modern phi
losophy. 1 (This is an interesting exercise 1 suggest undertaking.)
What is a prophet? He is first and foremost a man with an
unmediated relation to the ruab Yahweh (the breath of Yahweh) ,
who receives a word from God which does not properly belong to
him; Prophetic discourse opens with the formula "Thus speaks, or
spoke, Yahweh. " As an ecstatic spokesperson for God, the nabi is
clearly distinct from the apostle, who, as an emissary with a deter
minate purpose, must carry out his assignment with lucidity and
search on his own for the words of the message, which he may
consequently define as "my announcement" (Rom. 2:16; 16:25) .
Nevertheless, in Judaism, prophecy is not an institution whose
functions and figures could be clearly delineated; rather, it is
something like a force or a tension that is in constant struggle with
other forces that seek to limit it in its modalities, primarily in its
1. Translator's note. T he word parrhesiast comes from parrhesia, which
refers to frankness or freedom of speech. For more on this term, see the lec
tures by Foucault which were also given as lectures at the University of
California, Berkeley, in Fall
Speech.
1983, published as Michel Foucault, Fearless
The Fourth Day
61
time. The rabbinic tradition thus tends to enclose any legitimate

prophecy within the limits of an ideal past, ending with the first
destruction of the Temple in 587 B.C.E. Mfirmations are thus read
along the lines: "The second time has five less things than the first:
fire, the Ark, and the oil of unction, urim and tummim and the
holy breath [that is, the prophetic spirit] ," or ''After the death of
the last prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the holy breath
took leave of Israel; but the heavenly messages reached the bat kol
[literally, the 'daughter of the voice,' meaning an echo or a rem
nant of prophecy] . " But strangely enough, along with this closure
of prophecy from the outside, so to speak, is corresponding limi
tation that works it from within, as if it contained within itself the
intimation of its own closure and insufficiency. Thus, for example,
in Zechariah 13 :2, one reads, "On that day . . . I shall rid the land
of the prophets and the unclean spirit. And if anyone continues to
prophesy, his parents, filther and mother, shall say to him, 'You
shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the
Lord.' When he prophesies, his father and mother shall pierce him
through. On that day, every prophet will be ashamed to relate his
vision." (The archetype for the curse of the poet at the beginning
of Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal is easily recognizable here; the
Pauline affirmation "I am not ashamed of my announcement"
should be understood in reference to passages like these.)
However one understands this closure, the prophet is essentially
defined through his relation to the future. In Psalm 74:9 we read,
"We see no signs, no prophet any more, and there is no one among
us who knows how long." "How long" : each time the prophets
announce the coming of the Messiah, the message is always about
a time to come, a time not yet present. This is what marks the dif
ference between the prophet and the apostle. The apostle speaks
forth from the arrival of the Messiah. At this point prophecy must
keep silent, for now prophecy is truly fulfilled. (This is how one
should read its innermost tension toward closure.) The word pass
es on to the apostle, to the emissary of the Messiah, whose time is
no longer the future, but the present. This is why Paul's technical
term for the messianic event is ho nyn kairos "the time of the now";
this is why Paul is an apostle and not a prophet.

But the apostle must b e distinguished from another figure, with
whom he is often confused, just as messianic
Apocalyptic time is confused with schato iogicaJ ,}i rne. The
most insidious misunderstanding o(f'h e messian
ic announcement does not consist in mistaking it for prophecy,
which is turned toward the future, but for apocalypse, which con
templates the end of time. The apocalyptic is situated on the last
day, the Day ofWrath. It sees the end fulfilled and describes what
it sees. The time in which the apostle lives is, however, not the
eschaton, it is not the end of time. If you want to formulate the dif
ference between messianism and apocalypse, between the apostle
and the visionary, I think you could say, using a phrase by Gianni
Carchia, that the messianic is not the end of time, but thj;im e of
the end (Carchia, 144) . What interests the apostle is not the last
day, it is not the instant in which time ends, but the time that con
tracts itself and begins to end (ho kairos synestalmenos estin; 1 Cor.
7:29) , or if you prefer,._lhe time thacremains betweentiIIle-and its
end.
The Jewish apocalyptic tradition and rabbinic tradition recog
nized a distinction between two times or two worlds ( 'olamim):
the 'olam hazzeh, which designates the duration of the world from
creation to its end, and the 'olam habba, the world to come, the
atemporal eternity that comes after the end of the world. In the
Greek-speaking Jewish communities, it follows that two aiones or
two kosmoi are marked out: ho aion touto, ho kosmos outos ("this
eon, this world,") and ho aion mellon ("the coming eon") . Both of
these terms appear in the Pauline text, but messianic time, the
time in which the apostle lives, the only time that concerns him,
is neither the 'olam hazzeh nor the 'olam habba, neither chrono
logical time nor the apocalyptic eschaton. Once again, it is a rem
nant, the time that remains between these two times, when the
division of time is itself divided, whether it be divided by a mes
sianic caesura or Apelles' cut.
This is why it is of utmost importance that we rectify the fre
quent misunderstanding that occurs when messianic time is flatly
identified with eschatological time, thus making the specificity of
The Fourth Day

what constitutes messianic time unthinkable. Around the second
half of the 196os-following Hans Blumenberg's book on The
Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) and before it, the book by
Karl Lowith on Meaning and History: Theological Implications of
the Philosophy of History (1948)-extensive debate on the theme
secularization and modernity took place in Germany. Even
though these authors' positions differ, and in certain regards are
even opposed to one another, they share a common presupposition, that of the irreconcilable antithesis between modernity and
eschatology. For both, the Christian conception of a time oriented toward eschatological salvation and, hence, toward a final end,
was obsolete and ultimately antithetical to modernity's handling
of its own conception of its history and time. Without entering
into this debate, I would simply like to note that Blumenberg and
Lowith both IDistake messianism for eschatology, the time of the
end for the end of time. What is essential in Paul, messianic time,
thus escapes them, in that it puts into question the very possibility of a clear division between the two 'olamim.
How should this time be represented? On first glance, things
seem simple. First, you have secular time, which Paul usually
refers to as chronos, which spans from creation to the messianic
event (for Paul, this is not the birth of Jesus, but his resurrec
tion) . Here time contracts itself and begins to end. But this con
tracted time, which Paul refers to in the expression ho nyn kairos,
"the time of the now," lasts until the parousia, the full presence
of the Messiah. The latter coincides with the Day of Wrath and
the end of time (but remains indeterminate, even if it is immi
nent) . Time explodes here; or rather, it implodes into the other
eon, into eternity.
If we try to represent this schema in a line, we would end up
with something like this:
A
A is creation, B is the messianic event, the resurrection of Jesus,

and C is the eschaton, when time moves into eternity. This repre-
'1filI

sentation has the advantage o f clearly showing that messianic time,
ho nyn kairos, does not coincide either with the end of time and
the future eon or with secular chronological time; nevertheless, it
is not outside of chronological time either. Messianic time is that
part of secular time which undergoes an entirely transformative
contraction (in our sketch this heterogeneity is inadequately rep
resented by dotted lines) . It would probably be more exact if we
took recourse to Apelles' cut, representing messianic time as a
caesura which, in its dividing the division between two times,
introduces a remainder [ resto] into it that exceeds the division:
In this schema, messianic time is presented as a part of the sec

ular eon that constitutively exceeds chronos and as a part of eterni
ty that exceeds the future eon, while being situated in the position
of a remainder [ resto] with regard to the division between the two
eons.
But can we speak of having truly understood messianic time in
this fashion? A general problem arises here regarding our repre
sentations of time, which are of a spatial order. It has often been
noted that these spatial representations-point, line, segment
generate a kind of falsification that rriakes unthinkable the lived
experience of time. The confusion between eschaton and messian
ic time is a flagrant example of this: if you represent time as a
straight line and its end as a punctual instant, you end up with
something perfectly representable, but absolutely unthinkable.
Vice-versa, if you reflect on a real experience of time, you end up
with something thinkable, but absolutely un rep resen table. In the
same manner, even though the image of messianic time as a seg
ment situated between two eons is clear, it tells us nothing of the
experience of the time that remains, a time that begins to end.
Where does this gap between representation and thought, image
and experience come from? Is another representation of time pos
sible, one that would avoid this misunderstanding?
The Fourth Day

In attempting to respond to this question, I will avail myself of
a concept that does not come from the sciences or from philosophy, but from the Operational Time
work of a linguist who is perhaps the most
philosophical linguist of our century: Gustave Guillaume. Even
though he worked alongside Meillet and Benveniste, his reflec
tions on language remained particularly marginal in twentieth
century linguistics and have only recently begun to be explored in
their depths. Guillaume looks at language [lingua] from the point
of view of the Aristotelian distinction between potential and act,
and thus is able to come up with an original perspective, already
implicit in the Saussurean distinction between langue and parole,
yet far more complex. Guillaume's book Temps et verbe (Time and
Verb) is the book that interests us the most. It reunites two stud
ies that were published in 1929 and 1945 respectively. The concept
that I am referring to is that of temps operatif, "operational time,"
which appears in both of his works. According to Guillaume, the
human mind experiences time, but it does not possess the repre
sentation of it, and must, in representing it, take recourse to con
structions of a spatial order. It follows that grammar represents
verbal time as an infinite line comprised of two segments, past and
future, separated by the cutting of the present:
past
present
future
This representation, which Guillaume even calls a time-image,

is inadequate precisely because it is too perfect. It presents time as
though it were always already constructed, but does not show time
in the act of being constructed in thought. In order to truly under
stand something, Guillaume says, considering it only in its con
structed or achieved state is not enough; you also have to represent
the phases through which thought had to pass constructing it.
Every mental operation, however quick, has to be achieved in a
certain time, which, while short, is no less real. Guillaume defines
66
"operational time" as the time the mind takes to realize a time

image. An astute study of linguistic phenomena shows that lan
guages do not organize their own verbal systems according to the
previous linear schema (whose defect lies in its being too perfect) ,
but rather by referring the constructed image back to the opera
tional time in which it is constructed. In this way, Guillaume is
able to complicate the chronological representation of time by
adding a projection in which the process of forming the time
image is cast back onto the time image itself. In so doing, he
comes up with a new representation of time, that of chronogenet
ic time, which is no longer linear but three-dimensional. The
schema of chronogenesis thus allows us to grasp the time-image in
its pure state of potentiality (time in posse), in its very process of
formation (time in fieri ) , and, finally, in the state of having been
constructed (time in esse), taking into account all of the verb forms
of a language (aspects, modalities, and tenses) according to a uni
tary model.
It becomes clear why one would want to introduce the concept of

operational time into the science of language. Not only does this allow
Guillaume to restore time in a spatial representation that is completely
deprived of time, as are all images; in addition, the idea that language
could refer itself back to the operational time of its own becoming
already provides it with the basis-and with that, the principle for an
additional intrication-for one of the most ingenious creations of twen
tieth-century linguistics, Benveniste's theory of enunciation. Through .
shifters, what Benveniste calls indicate/as de l'enonciation, language
refers to its own taking place, to a pure instance of discourse in action.
This capacity to refer to the pure presence of the enunciation goes hand
in hand, according to Benveniste, with chronothese, time-positing (liter
ally, "chronothesis"), itself the origin of our representation of time. In
this way, an axial point of reference is established with regard to our rep
resentation of time. But if each mental operation, each "thought in
action of language" as Guillaume says, implies an operational time, then
even referring to the instance of discourse in action would imply a cer
tain time, and chronothesis, or time-positing, would contain within
itself another time that introduces a disjointedness and delay in the
"pure presence" of the enunciation. Because Benveniste makes enuncia-
The Fourth Day

tion the very foundation of subjectivity and consciousness, this lapse
and delay would then be a part of the structure of the subject. To the
extent that thought is always "in the action of language" and, for this
reason, necessarily implies an operational time in itself: then-no mat
ter how great its speed and ability to soar over things-thought could
never coincide perfectly with itself and the self-presence of conscious
ness consequently would always take on the form of time. Among other
things, this would explain why the thought of time and the representa
tion of time could never coincide. For in order to form the words in
which thought is expressed-and in which a certain time-image is real
ized-thought would have to take recourse to an operational time,
which cannot be represented in the representation in which it is still
implicated.
We may now attempt to develop the paradigm of operational

time beyond the confines of linguistics and apply it to our problem of messianic time. In every representation we make of time
and in every discourse by means of which we define and represent
time, another time is implied that is not entirely consumed by rep
resentation. It is as though man, insofar as he is a thinking and
speaking being, produced an additional time with regard to
chronological time, a time that prevented him from perfectly
coinciding with the time out of which he could make images and
representations. This ulterior time, nevertheless, is not another
time, it is not a supplementary time added on from outside to
chronological time. Rather, it is something like a time within
time-not ulterior but interior-which only measures my discon
nection with regard to it, my being out of synch and in noncoin
cidence with regard to my representation of time, but precisely
because of this, allows for the possibility of my achieving and taking hold of it. We may now propose our first definition of mes
sianic time: messianic time is the time that time takes to come to an
end, or, more precisely, the time we take to bring to an end, to
achieve our representation of time. This is not the line of chrono
logical time (which was representable but unthinkable), nor the
instant of its end (which was just as unthinkable) ; nor is it a seg
ment cut from chronological time; rather, it is operational time
68
pressing within the chronological time, working and transforming

it from within; it is the time we need to make time end: the time
that is left us [il tempo che ci resta] . Whereas our representation of
chronological time, as the time in which we are, separates us from
ourselves and transforms us into impotent spectators of our
selves-spectators who look at the time that flies without any time
left, continually missing themselves-messianic time, an opera
tional time in which we take hold of and achieve our representa
tions of time, is the time that we ourselves are, and for this very
reason, is the only real time, the only time we have.
It is because messianic klesis is caught up in this operational
time that it can take on the form of the as not, the constant revo
cation of every vocation. The passage on the hos me that we com
mented on at length in I Corinthians 7 begins, "This I say,
brethren, time contracted itself" [ho kairos synestalmenos estin: sys
tello signifies the act of brailing up sails as well as the way in which
an animal gathers himself before lunging] . It continues, "the rest
is [to loipon, as was noted, not only signifies 'finally' or 'besides,'
but also marks out messianic time as the time remaining] that
even those having wives may be as not having, and those weeping
as not weeping. " But for this very reason, messianic time is the
time that we have, par excellence ("Therefore, whilst we have time
[hos kairon echomen] let us work good"; Gal. 6:10) . Paul twice uses
the expression ton kairon exagorazomenoi, "buying up time" (Eph.
5:16 and Col. 4: 5) to convey the temporal condition of messianic
time.
Kairos and chronos are usually opposed to each other, as though
they were qU9-litatively heterogeneous,
Kairos and Chronos which is more or less the case. But what
is most important in our case is not so
much-or not only-the opposition between the two, as much as
the relation between them. What do we have when we have kairos?
The most beautiful definition of kairos I know of occurs in the
Corpus Hippocraticum, which characterizes it in relation to
chronos. It reads: chronos esti en ho kairos kai kairos esti en ho ou pol
los chronos, " chronos is that in which there is kairos, and kairos is
The Fourth Day

that in which there is little chronos." Look at the extraordinary
interlacing of these two concepts, they are literally placed within
each other. KairoS' (which would be translated banally as "occa
sion") does not have another time at its disposal; in other words,
what we take hold of when we seize kairos is not another time, but
a contracted and abridged chronos. The Hippocratic text continues
with these words: "healing happens at times through chro n os,
other times through kairos." That messianic "healing" happens in
kairos is evident, but this kairos is nothing more than seized
chronos. The pearl embedded in the ring of chance is only a small
portion of chronos, a time remaining [ restanteJ . (Hence the perti
nence of the rabbinic apologue, for which the messianic world is
not another world, but the secular world itself, with a slight
adjustment, a meager difference. But this ever so slight difference,
which results from my having grasped my disjointedness with
regard to chronological time, is, in every way, a decisive one.)
Let us now take a closer look at the structure of messianic time
in Paul. As noted, Paul decomposes the messianic
event into two times: resurrection and parousia, the
Parousia
second coming of Jesus at the end of time. Out of
this issues the paradoxical tension between an already and a not yet
that defines the Pauline conception of salvation. The messianic
event has already happened, salvation has already been achieved
according to believers, but, nevertheless, in order to truly be ful
filled, this implies an additional time. How should we interpret
this unusual scission, since it seems to introduce a constitutive
delay or deferment into the messianic? The problem is crucial, for
on it hangs the correct solution to the antinomies that character
ize the interpretations of messianism in our time. According to
Scholem-who holds a view fairly widespread in Judaism-the
messianic antinomy is defined as "a life lived in deferment" (Leben
im Aufichub), in which nothing can be achieved: "So-called Jewish
existence," he writes, "possesses a tension that never finds true
release" (Scholem 1971, 35) . Equally aporetic is the position that
thinks of messianic time as a kind of border zone, or even "a tran
sitional time between two periods, that is, two parusie, the first
70
which determines the beginning of the new eon, and the second
the end of the antique eon," and as such, makes it belong to both
eons. What is at risk here is a delay implicit in the concept of
"transitional time," for, as with every transition, it tends to be pro
longed into infinity and renders unreachable the end that it sup
posedly produces.
The Pauline decomposition of presence finds its true meaning
from the perspective of operational time. As operational time, as
the amount of time needed to end representations of time, the
messianic ho nyn kairos can never fully coincide with a chronolog
ical moment internal to its representation. The end of time is actu
ally a time-image represented by a final point on the homogeneous
line of chronology. But as an image devoid of time, it is itself
impossible to seize hold of, and, consequently, tends to infinitely
defer itself Kant must have been thinking of a time like this when,
in "The End of All Things," he speaks of an idea of the end of time
that is "contranatural" and "perverse" and "comes from us when we
misunderstand the final end" (Kant, 200) . Giorgio Manganelli also
seems to allude to a similar kind of inadequate representation of
the end when he makes his great heresiarch say that we do not real
ize that the world has already ended, because the end "generates a
kind of time, in which we dwell, that in itself prevents us from
experiencing it" (Manganelli, 19) . The fallacy lies in changing oper
ational time into a supplementary time added onto chronological
time, in order to infinitely postpone the end. This is why it is
important that one correctly understand the meaning of the term
parousia. It does not mean the "second coming" of Jesus, a second
messianic event that would follow and subsume the first. In Greek,
parousia simply means presence ( par-ousia literally signifies to be
next to; in this way, being is beside itself in the present) . Parousia
does not signal a complement that is added to something in order
to complete it, nor a supplement, added on afterward, that never
reaches fulfillment. Paul uses this term to highlight the innermost
uni-dual structure of the messianic event, inasmuch as it is com
prised of two heterogeneous times, one kairos and the other
chronos, one an operational time and the other a represented time,
which are coextensive but cannot be added together. Messianic
The Fourth Day
71
presence lies beside itself: since, without ever coinciding with a

chronological instant, and without ever adding itself onto it, it
seizes hold of this instant and brings it forth to fulfillment. The
Pauline decomposition of messianic presence is similar to the one
in Kafka's extraordinary theologoumenon, in which the Messiah does
not come on the day of his arrival, but only on the day after; not
on the last day but on the very last day. ("Er [the Messiah] wird erst
einen Tag nach seiner Ankunft kommen, er wird nicht am letzten
Tag kommen, sondern am allerletzten"; Kafka, 90) . I found a per
fect parallel in an Islamic text that reads, "My coming and the hour
[messianic time] are so close to one another that the hour of my
coming risks arriving before me" (Casanova, 69) . The Messiah has
already arrived, the messianic event has already happened, but its
presence contains within itself another time, which stretches its
parousia, not in order to defer it, but, on the contrary, to make it
graspable. For this reason, each instant may be, to use Benjamin's
words, the "small door through which the Messiah enters." The
Messiah always already had his time, meaning he simultaneously
makes time his and brings it to fulfillment.2
The rabbinic corumentary known as the Genesis Rabbah pro
vides an instructive reflection on the fallacy (common nowadays)
of taking operational time (the time that time takes to end) for
supplementary time (which is added onto time indefinitely) .
These reflections concern Saturday, which, for Judaism as well as
for the Church Fathers, constituted a kind of small-scale model
for messianic time and referred in particular to the interpretation
of Genesis 2:2, ''And on the seventh day God completed his work
which he had made; and on the seventh day he rested from all his
work." In order to avoid this paradoxical coincidence of fulfill
ment and interruption, the Septuagint amends the first clause,
writing "sixth day" (en te hemera te ekte ) instead of "seventh," so
that the conclusion of the work of creation becomes another day
(te hemera te hebdome) . But the author of Genesis Rabbah instead
says, "Man, who knows not times, moments and hours, takes
2.
Translator's note.
T he Italian plays on the expression fare
suo tempo,
meaning that something "has its time." T he Italian reads: " II messia fa gia
sempre il suo tempo-cioe, insieme,
fa suo il tempo e 10 compie."

something from profane time and adds i t to holy time; but the
holy one, blessed be his name, who knows times, moments, and
hours, will enter on Saturday only by a hairsbreadth" ( Genesis
Rabbah, vol. 1, chap. 10, sec. 9) . Saturday-messianic time-is not
another day, homogeneous to others; rather, it is that innermost
disjointedness within time through which one may-by a hairs
breadth-grasp time and accomplish it.
Now is the time for us to bring up the theme of the millenary king
dom, or the messianic Zwischen reich, in Paul.

According to a notion that most certainly has
Jewish origins, but which also has roots in the
Christian tradition, a messianic kingdom will take place on earth, after
the parousia and before the end of time, that will last for a thousand
years (hence the term Chiliasm) . But even if Eusebius, and later on
Jerome, had been accusing Papias of circulating this "Jewish tale," the
idea is nevertheless present in the Apocalypse and in pseudo-Barnabas,
as well as in Justin, Tertullian, Irenaeus, and at least to a certain degree,
Augustine, before it reappears fully in the twelfth century with Joachim
of Flora.
For what concerns Paul, the question essentially comes down to the
interpretation of I Corinthians I5:23-27 and I Thessalonians 4:I3-I8.
Against the Chiliastic reading of these passages, Wilcke noted that "for
Paul, the basileia Christi was equivalent to a new eon, and therefore to
something present, distinct from the divine eschatological kingdom"
(Wilcke, 99), and that "in Pauline eschatology . . . there is no place for
a messianic interim-kingdom on earth, instead, at the end of time, the
latter flows directly into the eternal kingdom of God without any inter
mediate stages" (Wilcke, I56) . Bultmann, for his part, wrote that "the
primitive Christian community is aware of its being situated 'between
two times, ' that is, it finds itself at the end of the old eon and at the
beginning, or at least j ust before the beginning, of a new eon. As a con
sequence, this community understands its present as a very particular
kind of 'between. ' In I Cor. I5: 23-27 a very clear rendering of this
occurs. Rabbinic theory holds that the messianic kingdom is situated
between the old and new eons. For Paul, this kingdom is the present
found between resurrection and parusia" (Bultmann, 69I) .
Correctly understanding the problem of the kingdom (and, in a parallel
Millenary Kingdom
The Fourth Day
73
fashion, its secularized equivalent, the Marxian problem of the transi

tional phase between prehistory and history) depends on the meaning of
this "between." This would mean that millenarian interpretations are
both right and wrong. They are wrong if they try to identify the mes
sianic kingdom literally, meaning according to a certain span of chrono
logical time situated between parousia and the end of time. They are
right, since, in Paul, messianic time, as operational time, implies an
actual transformation of the experience of time that may even interrupt
secular time here and now. The kingdom does not coincide with any
chronological instant but is between them, stretching them into para
o usia. This is the reason for its particular "nearness," which corresponds
in Paul, as we shall see further on, with the nearness of the word of faith.
It is therefore important that one does not take entos hyman in the pas
sage in Luke 17:21 ("the kingdom of God is entos hyman") to mean
"within yourselves," as the common translations would have it, but
"close at hand, within the range of possible action," meaning nearby
(Riistow, 214-17).
Paul defines this innermost relation of messianic time to

chronological time, that is, to the time spanning from
TJpos
creation to resurrection, via two fundamental notions.
The first is that of typos, meaning figure and prefiguration, or foreshadowing. The determining passage is I Corinthians
IO:I-II, when Paul recalls a series of episodes in Israel's history:
"For I would not, brothers, have you ignorant, that our fathers
were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were
all immersed into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all
eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual
drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that . . . was the
Messiah. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for
they were overthrown in the desert. " At this point Paul adds, "In
these things they became figures [typoi] to us to the intent we
should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. " A few lines
later he uses the same image: "Now these things happened unto
them by way of figure [typicos ] ; and they were written for us, for
our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come to face
each other" [ta tele ton aionon katenteken; antao.-from anti
means "to be face to face, to confront each other"] .
74
Erich Auerbach has shown the importance of this "figural" con

ception of the world (Jerome translates typoi in I Cor. 10: 6 with in
jigura) in the Christian Middle Ages, when it becomes the
grounds for a general theory of allegorical interpretation. Through
the concept of typos, Paul establishes a relation, which we may
from this point on call a typological relation, between every event
from a past time and ho nyn kairos, messianic time. If follows that
in Romans 5:14, Adam, through whom sin has entered the world,
is defined as typos tou mellontos, the "figure of the future," mean
ing, the figure of the Messiah through whom grace will abound for
men. (In Hebrews 9:24, the man-made temple is defined as the
antitypos of the heavenly temple, which could also imply a sym
metrical relation with regard to typos.) What matters to us here is
not the fact that each event of the past-once it becomes figure
announces a future event and is fulfilled in it, but is the transfor
mation of time implied by this typological relation. The problem
here does not simply concern the biunivocal correspondence that
binds typos and antitypos together in an exclusively hermeneutic
relationship, according to the paradigm that prevailed in medieval
culture; rather, it concerns a tension that clasps together and trans
forms past and future, typos and antitypos, in an inseparable con
stellation. The messianic is not just one of two terms in this typo
logical relation, it is the relation itself This is the meaning of the
Pauline expression "for us, upon whom the ends of the ages
[aionon, the olamin] are come to face each other. " The two ends of
the olam hazzeh and the olam babba contract into each other with
out coinciding; this face to face, this contraction, is messianic
time, and nothing else. Once again, for Paul, the messianic is not
a third eon situated between two times; but rather, it is a caesura
that divides the division between times and introduces a remnant,
a zone of undecidability, in which the past is dislocated into the
present and the present is extended into the past.
One of the theses (the eighty-third, to be exact) Scholem want
ed to offer Benjamin on his twentieth birthday in 1918 reads,
"Messianic time is time of inversive waw" (Scholem 1971, 295) .
The Hebrew system of verbs distinguishes between verb forms not
The Fourth Day
75
so much according to tense (past and future) but according to

aspect: complete (which is usually translated by the past) , and
incomplete (usually translated by the future) . If, however, you put
a waw (which is, for this reason called inversive or conversive)
before a complete form, it changes it into an incomplete, and vice
versa. According to Scholem's astute suggestion (which Benjamin
may have recalled years later) , messianic time is neither the com
plete nor the incomplete, neither the past nor the future, but the
inversion of both. This conversive movement is perfectly rendered
in the Pauline typological relation as an area of tension in which
two times enter into the constellation the apostle called ho nyn
kairos. Here, the past (the complete) rediscovers actuality and
becomes unfulfilled, and the present (the incomplete) acquires a
kind of fulfillment.
The second notion through which Paul expresses messianic time,
and which complements typos, is recapitulation. Paul does not use the substantive
Recapitulation
anakephalaiosis, but the corresponding verb
anakephalaioomai, which literally means "to recapitulate. " The
determining passage is Ephesians 1:10. Having just laid out the
divine project of messianic redemption (apolytrosis), Paul writes,
"as for the economy of the pleroma of times, all things are recapit
ulated in him, things in heaven and things on earth [eis oikono
mian tou pleromatos ton kairon, anakephalaiosasthai ta panta en to

christo, ta epi tois euranois kai ta epi tes ges en auto] . " This short
verse is laden with meaning to the point that one could say that
several fundamental texts in Western culture-such as the doc
trine of apocastasis in Origen and Leibniz; repetition or retrieval
[ Gjentagelse] in Kierkegaard; the eternal return in Nietzsche; and
repetition [ Wiederholung] in Heidegger-are the consequences of
an explosion of the meaning harbored within.
What Paul says here is that insofar as messianic time aims
toward the fulfillment of time- (pleroma ton kairon; note that it
says kairoi and not chronoi! cf. Gal. 4:4: pleroma tou chronou)--it
effectuates a recapitulation, a kind of summation of all things, in

heaven and o n earth-of all that has transpired fiom creation to
the messianic "now," meaning of the past as a whole. Messianic
time is a summary recapitulation of the past, even according to the
meaning of the adjective in the juridical expression "summary
judgment. "
This recapitulation of the past produces a pleroma, a saturation
and fulfillment of kairoi (messianic kairoi are therefore literally full
of chronos, but an abbreviated, summary chronos), that anticipates
eschatological pleroma when God "will be all in all. " Messianic
pleroma is therefore an abridgment and anticipation of eschato
logical fulfillment. It is not by chance that recapitulation and
pleroma are found beside each other: this juxtaposition is found
also in Romans I3:9-IO, when Paul says that each commandment
(entole) "is recapitulated [anakephalaioutaz] in the phrase "Love
your neighbor as yourself," and straightaway adds, "Love . . . is
the pleroma of the law." If the Pauline recapitulation of the law
contains something more than Hillel's motto, from which it sup
posedly derives (responding to the goy who asks him to teach him
the whole of the Torah, Hillel says, "What you would not like oth
ers to do unto you, do not even do it unto your neighbor"), this
is because Paul does not intend it only as a practical maxim, but
as a messianic recapitulation, something inseparable from the mes
sianic fulfillment of times.
What is decisive here is that the pleroma of kairoi is understood
as the relation of each instant to the Messiah-each kairos is
unmittelbar zu Gott [immediate to God] , and is not just the final
result of a process (as is the case with the model Marxism inherit
ed from Hegel) . Just as Ticonius intuited in the chapter de reca
pitulatione in his Regulae, each time is the messianic now (totum
illud tempus diem vel horam esse), and the messianic is not the
chronological end of time, but the present as the exigency of ful
fillment, what gives itself "as an end" (ficet non in eo tempore finis,
in eo tam en titulo futurum est) (Ticonius, no) .
In this sense, recapitulation is nothing else than the other facet
of the typological relation established by messianic kairos between
present and past. The fact that we are not only dealing with a pre-
The Fourth Day
77
figuration, but with a constellation and a quasi unity between the

two times, is implicit in the idea that the entire past is summarily
contained, so to speak, in the present; this is how the pretense of a
remnant as all finds an ulterior foundation. The three things that
"remain" in I Corinthians 13:13 ("three things now remain: faith,
hope, love") are not states of mind, but three arches that bend to
sustain and fulfill the messianic experience of time. What is
undoubtedly at stake is only summary recapitulation, for God is
not yet "all in all," as he will be in the eschaton (when repetition is
no longer) . Yet this recapitulation is all the more significant for it
is precisely through it that the events of the past acquire their true
meanings and thus may be saved. (The passage in Ephesians
1:13-14, of which the previous verse is a part, is entirely devoted to
setting out the "announcement of salvation," euaggelion fes soterias.)
What happens at this point is similar to the panoramic vision
that the dying supposedly have of
their lives, when the whole of their
Memory and Salvation
existence passes before their eyes in
a flash-a vertiginous abbreviation. In messianic recapitulation,
something like a memory is also at stake, but this particular mem
ory only concerns the economy of salvation (yet couldn't this be
said to be the case for every memory?) . In this case, memory shows
itself as a propaedeutic and anticipation of salvation. And just as
the past frees itself only in memory from the distant strangeness of
what has been lived-thereby becoming my past for the very first
time-so too, in the "economy of the plenitude of times," men
appropriate their history, and what once happened to the Jews is
recognized as a figure and reality for the messianic community.
And just as the past becomes possible again in some fashion
through memory-that which was fulfilled becomes unfulfilled
and the unfulfilled becomes fulfilled-so too in messianic recapit
ulation do men ready themselves to forever take leave of the past
in eternity, which knows neither past nor repetition.
This is why the widespread view of messianic time as oriented
solely toward the future is fallacious. We are used to hearing that
in the moment of salvation one has to look to the future and to

eternity. To the contrary, for Paul recapitulation, anakephalaiosis,
means that ho nyn kairos is a contraction of past and present, that
we will have to settle our debts, at the decisive moment, first and
foremost with the past. This obviously does not imply attachment
or nostalgia; quite the opposite, for the recapitulation of the past
is also a summary judgment pronounced on it.
'6 This double orientation of messianic time also allows us to under
stand Paul's particular formula that expresses messianic tension: epek
teinomenos. After evoking his past as a Pharisee and Jew according to the
flesh, he writes, "Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself as hav
ing seized hold of myself: Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind,
but straining forward [epekteinomenos] to what lies ahead" (Phil. 3 :13) .
The two contrasting prepositions epi (on) and ek (from) , prepositions
that go before a verb that means "to be in a tension toward something,"
clearly convey the double movement in the Pauline gesture. The tension
toward what lies ahead is produced on and out of what lies behind.
"Forgetting the past, only on and out of this straining toward the
future. " This is why Paul, caught in this double tension, can neither
seize hold of himself nor be fulfilled; he can only seize hold of his own
being seized: "It is not that I have already seized hold of it or have
already reached fulfillment, but I strive to seize hold because the Messiah
once seized hold of me" (Phil. 3 :12) .
I would now like to provide you with something like a concrete

example, a kind of a small-scale
The Poem and Rhyme model of the structure of messianic
time that we have been attempting
to grasp in the Pauline text. This model may perhaps surprise you,
but I think that the structural analogy furnished by this example
is pertinent. It concerns the poem-or, better yet, that poetic
structure that represents-in modern poetry and more particular
ly, in its origins in Romance lyric, the convention of rhyme.
Rhyme, which appears infrequently in classical poetry, is devel
oped in Latin Christian poetry starting from the fourth century
and eventually becomes an essential component in the fashioning
of Romance lyric. Among the various verse forms, I will concen
trate on one of the best known sestinas, "Lo ferm voler qu' el cor
The Fourth Day
79
m'intra " ("The firm will which enters my heart"), by Arnaut

Daniel. Before we begin our reading, I would like to make one
observation on the temporal structure of lyric poetry in general,
especially in metrical schemes, as they appear in the sonnet, the
canzone, the sestina, and so on. From this perspective, a poem is
something that will necessarily finish at a given point: it will end
after fourteen lines in the sonnet, but may be prolonged by three
more lines, if the sonnet has a coda.
The poem is therefore an organism or a temporal machine that,
from the very start, strains toward its end. A kind of eschatology
occurs within the poem itself But for the more or less brief time
that the poem lasts, it has a specific and unmistakable temporali-,
ty, it has its own time. This is where rhyme, which in the sestina
consists in repeated and often rhyming end words, comes into
play. 3
What is peculiar to the sestina is that the status of the repeated
end words changes, in the sense that the return of homophony as
in typically rhymed poems, the final syllables is replaced by the
reappearance of the six end words in the six stanzas, in a complex
but equally regulated order. At the end, the tornada recapitulates
the end words by dispersing them within its three lines.
Let us look at our example:
Lo firm voler quel cor m'intra

no m pot ges becs escoissendre ni ongla
de lauzengier qui pert per mal dir sarma;
e pus no laus batrab ram ni ab verja,
sivals a frau, lai on non aurai oncle,
jauzirai joi, en vergier 0 dins cambra.
Quan mi sove de la cambra
on a mon dan sai que nulhs om non intra
-ans me son tug plus que fraire ni oncle
non ai membre no. m fremisca, neis l'o ngla,
aissi cum foi l'enfos devant la verja:
tal paor ai no 1 sia prop de larma.
3. Translator's note. For a discussion on temporality and the sestina, with
a discussion of Arnaut Daniel, see Shapiro (1980) .
80

Del cors Ii fors, non de l'arma,
e cossentis m'a celat dins sa cambra,
que plus mi nafra ' l cor que colp de verja
qu'ar 10 sieus sers lai ont ilh es non intra:
de lieis serai aisi cum earn e ongla
e non creirai castic d'amie ni d'oncle.
Ane la seror de mon oncle
mon amei plu ni tan, per aquest'arma,
qu'aitan vezis cum es 10 detz de l'o ngla,
s'a lieis plagues, volgr'esser de sa cambra;
de me pot far l'amors qu'ins el cor m'intra
miels a son vol c'om fortz de frevol verja.
Pusfloric la seca verja
ni de n'Adam foron nebot e oncle
tan jin'amors cum selha qu'el cor m'intra
mon cugfos anc en cors no neis en arma:
on qu'eu estei, fors en plan 0 dins cambra;
mos cors no.s part de lieis tan cum ten l'ongla.
Aissi s'empren e s'enongla
mos cors en lieis cum l'escors'en la verja,
qu'ilh m ' es de joi tors e palais e cambra;
e non am tan paren, fraire ni oncle,
qu'en Paradis n'aura doble joi m'arma,
si ja nulhs hom per ben amar lai intra.
Arnaut tramet son cantar d'o ngl'e et d'oncle
a Gran Desiei, qui de sa verj'a l'arma,
son cledisat qu'apres dins cambra intra.
[The firm will that enters into my heart

Can never be torn away from me with beak or nail
By a false flatterer who, through evil talk, loses his soul.
And since I don't dare to bat them with branch or rod,
At least on the sly, where I don't have any uncle,
I'll enjoy my joy in an orchard or in a chamber.
The Fourth Day
8r
Whenever I remember the chamber

Where, to my damage, I know that no man enters
(Instead everyone's worse to me than a brother or an uncle),
I don't have a member that doesn't tremble-nor a nail
Just like a child standing before the rod;
Such fear I have that it [she] may be too much for my soul.
If only I were hers with body-not with soulAnd she'd consent to hiding me inside her chamber!
For my heart wounds me more than a blow from a rod,
Since this serf of hers, where she lies, doesn't enter.
I'll always be close to her, like her flesh to her nails,
And I don't heed the reproach of a friend or an uncle.
I never loved the sister of my uncle
More or as much-upon my very soul!
For as close as stands the finger to its nail
(If it pleased her), I would like to be to her chamber.
This love can handle me as it enters my heart
More at its will than a tough man with a frail rod.
After the flourishing of the Dry Rod
And from Lord Adam issued nephews and uncles,
A fine love like that which into my heart enters
I don't think ever existed in a body or even a soul.
Wherever she may be-outside in the square or in her chamber
My body doesn't leave her as far as extends a nail.
And so my body clings with its nails
And is attached to hers like the bark around a rod;
For to me she's a tower of joy, a palace, a chamber,
And I don't love as much any brother, parent, or uncle;
For in Paradise double joy will await my soul
If ever any man, through loving well, enters there.
Arnaut sends his song of the Uncle-Nail
For the pleasure of her who arms him with her rod,
His Desired One, whose value enters into the chamber.]
(Wilhelm, n6-I7)
As you can see, the order that governs the repetition of rhyming
end words is what is called retrogradatio cruciata, or cruciform ret-

rogradation, an alternation between inversion and progression, in
which the last rhyming end word of one stanza becomes the first
end word of the next stanza, the first line's end word slides into the
place of the second in the next stanza, the next to last slides to the
place of the third, and the second to the forth, and so on, in such
a way that the movement continues through the six stanzas. The
seventh stanza, if there were one, would repeat the same order as
the first. What interests us is not so much the numerological intri
cation, at least not for the time being, but the temporal structure
that is at work in the sestina. The sequence of thirty-nine lines (36
+ 3), could ideally unfurl itself according to a sequence that was
perfectly homologous with linear chronological time; however, the
thirty-nine lines are scanned and animated through the play of
alternating and rhyming end words, in such a way that each of
them uses and recalls the one in the preceding stanzas (or it recalls
itself as another) . At the same time, it announces its own repeti
tion to corne in the lines that follow. Through this complicated to
and-fro directed both forward and backward, the chronological
sequence of linear homogeneous time is completely transformed
into rhythmic constellations themselves in movement. It is not
that there is another time, corning from who-knows-where, that
would substitute for chronological time; to the contrary, what we
have is the same time that organizes itself through its own some
what hidden internal pulsation, in order to make place for the
time of the poem. Then, at the very end, when the movement of
cruciform retrogradation is fulfilled and the poem seems con
demned to repeat itself, the tornada returns to and recapitulates
the rhyming end words in a new sequence, simultaneously expos
ing their singularity along with their secret connectedness.
By now you will have perfectly understood why I suggested
looking at the sestina as a miniature model of messianic time. The
sestina-and, in this sense, every poem-is a soteriological device
which, though the sophisticated mechane of the announcement
and retrieval of rhyming end words (which correspond to typo
logical relations between past and present) , transforms chronolog
ical time into messianic time. Just as this time is not other to
The Fourth Day

chronological time or eternity, but is the transformation that time
undergoes when it is taken for a remnant, so too is the time of the
sestina the metamorphosis that time undergoes insofar as it is the
time of the end, the time that the poem takes to come to an end.
What is most surprising is that the structural analogy does not
seem fortuitous, at least in the case of the sestina. Contemporary
scholars have rediscovered the importance of numerological rela
tions within medieval poetry. The overt connection between the
sestina and the number six has since been related to the number's
meaning in the story of creation (Durling and Martinez, 270) . In
a distich, Honorius of Autun had already highlighted the signifi
cance of the sixth day, in which both creation and the fall of man
take place, as well as the sixth age of the world, in which man's
redemption is fulfilled: sexta namque die Deus hominem condidat
sexta aetate, sexta feria, sexta hora eum redimit ["God destroyed
man on the sixth day and redeemed him on the sixth age, sixth
holiday, and sixth hour"] . In Dante the "sixth hour" explicitly
refers to Adam's six hours in Paradise (Paradiso 26.141-42, "de la
prim'ora a quella che seconda / come '1 sol muta quadro, l' ora
sesta": "from the first hour, to that which cometh next / as the sun
changes quarter, to the sixth"), and his use of the sestina in the
rime petrose is also tinged with soteriological meaning (Adam is the
type for the Messiah) . The movement through the six stanzas of
the sestina repeats the movement of the six days of creation and
together articulates their relation to Saturday (the tornada) as a
cipher of the messianic fulfillment of time. One could say, as does
the author of Genesis Rabbah, that Saturday is not considered to
be a day homogeneous to others. Rather, it is the recapitulation
and messianic abbreviation of the story of creation (in three lines
the tornada recapitulates the internal structure of the poem) . This
is why the sestina cannot really end: its end is missed, just as the
seventh stanza is missed.
These thoughts may perhaps shed some light on the problem of
the origins of rhyme in European poetry-a problem on which
scholars are far from reaching even a shadow of agreement. Eduard
Norden's book, Die antike Kimstprosa, previously referenced with
'WI

regard t o Paul's style, contains a long and especially interesting
appendix on the history of rhyme. According to Norden, who dis
regards the old issue of the people having "invented" or intro
duced rhyme into modern Western poetry (according to Wilhelm
Meyer, rhyme has Semitic origins), rhyme is born from classical
rhetoric, specifically from homeoteleuton (or homoioteleuton),
which defines the figure we call parallelism. So-called ''Asianic''
rhetoric, to which Norden dedicates a large part of his analyses,
segments periods into short commata or cola, which are then artic
ulated and connected with each other through the repetition of
the same syntactic structure.4 It is precisely in the context of this
parallel repetition of cola that we see something like rhyme appear
for the first time, where corresponding parts of the phrase are also
linked through the consonance of the final syllables of the end
words (homeoteleutons) .
This is an interesting theory, and yet it harbors a certain irony,
since it makes prose come from an institution otten associated
exclusively with poetry. It fails, however, to tell us anything about
the reasons why a completely secondary rhetorical figure in prose is
transposed and absolutized into a fundamental poetic institution. I
have already said that rhyme appears in Latin Christian poetry at
the end of the imperial era, and progressively develops up the
threshold of modernity, where it takes on its present importance.
In George Lote's noteworthy book Histoire du vers ftanrais, among
the best cited examples of rhymed poetry is a piece by Augustine,
an author, as you know, who was particularly attuned to the prob
lem of time. In this poem, directed against the Donatists, true
rhymes appear exactly at the point where Augustine reworks the
evangelical parable that makes the parallel between the kingdom of
the heavens and a fishing net (Lote, 38). When Lote wants to cite
a work of poetry in which rhyme has already become a recognized
formal organizing principle, the example he gives is the hora novis
sima of the messianic event (Lote, 98) :
Hora sub hac novissima

mundi petivit infima,
4. Translator's note. In Eduard Norden's study of rhyme, he discerns
between various Greek styles and, using 4 Maccabees as an example, calls
one style ''Asianic'' since it differs from styles known to be from Alexandria.
The Fourth Day

promissus ante plurimis
propheticis oraculis.
About this latest (or last)
hour of the world,
he reached for the lowest things,
promised before by many prophetic oracles.
Moreover, scholars have remarked that Christian Latin poetry

organizes its relation to Scripture according to a typological
structure. Sometimes, as is the case for the epanaleptic distich
found in Sedulius and Rabanus Maurus, this typological struc
ture is translated into a prosodic structure where typos and anti
typos are related to one another through the parallelism of two
hemistichs (the first half of line A corresponding with the second
half of line B) .
By now you will have perfectly understood the hypothesis I am
about to put forth, which should be taken more as an epistemo
logical paradigm rather than as an historical-genealogical hypoth
esis: that rhyme issues from Christian poetry as a metrical-linguis
tic transcodification of messianic time and is structured according
to the play of typological relations and recapitulations evoked by
Paul. But also the Pauline text-especially if it is portioned in sti
choi as it is in certain editions, that is to say, in syntagmatic units
that do not differ greatly from cola and commata in classical rhet
oric-reveals itself as being entirely animated according to an
unprecedented play of inner rhymes, of alliterations and end
words. Norden notes that Paul draws from the formal use of par
allelism in Greek art, as well as from the semantic parallelism
found in Semitic poetry and prose. Augustine, who read Paul in
Latin, had already taken note of his use of "the figure designated
by the Greek word climax, though some prefer the Latin grada
tio . . . whereby words or ideas are linked one with another"
(Augustine, 107) . Jerome, who for his part is a shoddy and dubi
ous exegete of Paul, nevertheless as a translator understands the
rhyme value of homeoteleuton, which he attempts to preserve at
all costs. Paul pushes to an extreme the use of parallelism, antithe
ses, and homophony in classical rhetoric and Hebrew prose. But,
in breaking up a period into short and abrupt stichoi, articulated
86
T H E TIME THAT REMAIN S
in and stressed by rhyme, he reaches unknown heights in Greek or

even Semitic prose, as though he were responding to an inner exi
gency and an epochal motivation.
I will furnish you with a few examples. The first is the passage
on the has me, which we have commented on at length. Even a
faithful translation could not do justice to the prosodic structure
of the original:
kai oi klaiontes
hos me klaiontes,
kai oi chairontes
hos me chairontes,
kai oi agorazontes
hos me katechontes,
kai oi chromenoi ton kosmon
has me katachromenoi
[those weeping
as not weeping,
those rejoicing
as not rejoicing,
those buying
as not possessing,
those using the world
as not using it up]
Moreover, in the same First Letter to the Corinthians (I5 :42-44),

we find:
speiretai en phtorai
egeiretai en aphtarsiai,
speiretai en atimiai
egeiretai en doxe,
speiretai en astheneiai
egeiretai en dynamei,
speiretai soma psychicon
egeiretai soma pneumatikon
[it is sown in corruption
it is raised in incorruption,
it is sown in dishonor
it is raised in glory,
The Fourth Day

it
it
it
it
is
is
is
is
sown in weakness
raised in power,
sown a natural body
raised a spiritual body]
And in the Second Letter to Timothy 4:7-8, when the apostle's life
seems to rhyme with itself once it reaches its end (Jerome seems to
have noticed this, since his translation even further multiplies the
rhyme: bonum certamen certavi / cursum consummavi /fidem ser
va vi, "I have fought a good fight / I have finished my course / I
have kept the faith") , we read:
ton kalon agfma egonismai,

ton dromon teteleka,
ten pistin tetereka
loipon apokeitai moi
ho tes dikaiosynes stephanos.
I would like to end our exegesis of messianic time with the fol
lowing hypothesis: rhyme, understood in the broad sense of the
term as the articulation of a difference between semiotic series and
semantic series, is the messianic heritage Paul leaves to modern
poetry, and the history and fate of rhyme coincide in poetry with
the history and fate of the messianic announcement. One exam
ple is enough to prove beyond a doubt that this is to be taken
quite literally and show that this is not a question of seculariza
tion, but of a true theological heritage unconditionally assumed
by poetry. When H61derlin, on the threshold of a new century,
elaborates on his doctrine of the leave-taking of the gods-specif
ically of the last god, the Christ--at the very moment in which he
announces this new atheology, the metrical form of his lyric shat
ters to the point of losing any recognizable identity in his last
hymns. The absence of the gods is one with the disappearance of
dosed metrical form; atheology immediately becomes a-prosody.
The Fifth Day
Eis euaggelion theou
In an author's choice of terminology, hierarchies of a grammat

ical nature harbor no significance, and a particle, adverb,
Eis
and occasionally a punctuation mark can rise to the status of a terminus tech n icus, as may a substantive. Martin
Puder has highlighted the strategic importance of the adverb gle
ichwohl (nevertheless) in Kant. In this vein, one could just as well
highlight the determining function of Heidegger's uses of the
adverb schon (already) and the hyphen, in expressions like In-der
Welt-sein or Da-sein, the hyphen being the most dialectical of
punctuation marks, uniting only to the extent that it separates.
It comes as no surprise then that in Paul the Greek preposition
eis, which signals a general movement toward something, can take
on a terminological quality. Paul actually uses it to convey the
nature of faith, in expressions like pisteuein eis-or pistis eis-chris
ton lesoun (which then becomes our "to believe in," "faith in," via
Jerome's translation) . But because we will be analyzing this specif
ic Pauline usage of the term later on, paying close attention to the
term that follows it, euaggelion, we will postpone our analysis until
then.
Euaggelion (like the Hebrew besora-which appears in the ver

bal forms bsr and euaggelizesthai in the Bible and
Euaggelion
88
the Septuagint) means the "announcement" and
The Fifth Day

"joyful message" announced by the euaggelos, the messenger of joy.
The term signifies both the act of announcing, and at the same
time, the content of the announcement. This is why, twice in the
Letter to the Romans (2:16; 16:25) , Paul uses the formula "accord
ing to my announcement" (kata ton euaggelion emou), allowing for
a perfect indeterminacy between the two meanings. It is only later
on, once a scriptural canon begins to form, that the term euagge
lion becomes identified with a written text. This is why Origen
(first half of the third century) feels compelled to note a difference
in specific reference to the Pauline formula kata ton euaggelion
emou: "For among Paul's writings," he notes, "we do not have a
book called 'gospel' [euaggelion] in the usual sense, but everything
which he preached and said was euaggelion, the gospel" (Origen
1989, 3 8 ) . Rabbi Meir's quip, which plays on Greek and Hebrew
words, calling the Christian euaggelion the avon gillayion, "the
book [or scroll] of sin," occurs in this same period and is only
comprehensible if at that time euaggelion also designated a book.
Just as the apostle differs from the prophet, so does the tempo
ral structure implied by his euaggelion differ from the temporal
structure of prophesy. The announcement does not refer to a
future event, but to a present fact. "Euaggelion," Origen writes, "is
either a discourse [logos] which contains the presence [parousia] of
a good for the believer, or a discourse which announces that an
awaited good is present [pareinatJ" (Origen 1989, 39) . The under
lying connection between announcement-faith-presence (euagge
lion-pistis-parousia) is conveyed perfectly in this definition and is
precisely what we must attempt to understand. The problem
regarding the meaning of the term euaggelion is inseparable from
the problem in the meaning of the term pistis, "faith," and the
implied parousia. What is a logos that can enact a presence for
whomever hears it and believes?
Taken this way, the entire Letter to the Romans is no more than
a paraphrase of the term euaggelion, which appears in the incipit,
and at the same time it itself coincides with the content of the
message announced. The letter is thus the impossibility of distin
guishing between the announcement and its content. When mod-

ern theological lexicons note that in Paul "the euagelion, under
stood as the promise of salvation, unites both the theological con
ception of a word which promises with a good which is the object of
the promise," the meaning of this coincidence is what must be
thought through. Coming to grips with the euaggelion thus neces
sarily means entering into an experience of language in which the
text of the letter is at every point indistinguishable from the
announcement and the announcement from the good announced.
Pistis, faith, is the name Paul gives to this zone of indistinction.
Immediately following the greeting of the Letter to the Romans,
Paul defines the essential relation between euaggelion and pistis in
the following terms: "the announcement is power [dynamis] for
the salvation of he who believes [panti to pisteuontzJ" (Rom. 1:16) .
This definition seems to imply that inasmuch as the announce
ment entails dynamis, potentiality-( dynamis signifies power as
much as it does possibility)-it needs the complement of faith
("whoever believes") for it to be effectual. Paul is perfectly aware
of the typical Greek opposition-which pertains both to cate
gories of language and thought-between potentiality (dynamis)
and act (energeia) . He even refers to it several times (Eph. 3 :7:
"according to the energeia of his dynamis"; and Phil. 3 :21: "accord
ing to the energeia of dynasthai"). Paul often couples faith with
energeia, being in act, so that with regard to potentiality, faith is
energumen (energoumene) par excellence, the principle of actuality
and operativity (Gal. 5:6: "pistis di' agapes energoumene, faith oper
ative in love"; Col. 1:29: "according to his [the Messiah's] energeia,
the one operating [energoumene] in my power") . But for Paul, this
principle is not external to the announcement; rather, it is pre
cisely that within it which makes potentiality active [ne mette in
atto la potenza] (Gal. 3 :4: "that which makes potentiality operative
[energon dynameis] among you, comes from the hearing of faith
,,
[euaggelizetai ten pistin] ) , while at the same time, it may also be
presented as the very content of what is announced (Gal. 1:23:
"Now he [Paul] announces the faith [euaggelizetai ten pistin] ") .
What has just been announced is the same faith that realizes the
power of the announcement. Faith is the announcement's being in
act, its energeia.
The Fifth Day
91
The euaggelion is therefore not merely a discourse, a logos that

says something about something independent of
the site of its enunciation and the subject who Plerophoria
hears it. To the contrary, for "our announcement
was not produced only in a discourse [en logo] , but also in power
and in much plerophoria" (1 Thess. 1:5) . Plerophoria is not limited
to meaning a "conviction," in the sense of an inner state of mind,
nor, as one scholar has suggested, "the abundance of divine activ
ity. " Etymologically speaking, the Ineaning is self-evident: pleros
signifies "full, fulfilled," and phoreo, frequentative of phero, means
"assiduously carrying" or in the passive, "to be transported vio
lently." In this sense, the compound therefore signifies bringing to
fullness, or in the passive, to be transported in fullness, to fully
adhere to something without any gap left over. Understood this
way it means being convinced (not in the psychological sense, but
in the ontological sense, according to the meaning Michelstadter
ascribes to the term persuasion) . The announcement is not a logos
empty in-itself but that may nevertheless be believed and verified;
it is born egen ethe in the faith of the one who utters it and
who hears and lives in it exclusively. The reciprocal interlacing of
announcement, faith, and plerophoria is repeated in Romans 4:22,
when the apostle seems to approximate an awareness of a particu
lar performative power implicit in the promise (epaggelia). (Thus,
in the greeting, Paul highlights the etymological connection
between epaggelia and euaggelion: euaggelion ho proepeggeilato, "the
announcement which had been pre-announced," meaning, prom
ised; Rom. 1:2.) Faith consists in being fully persuaded of the nec
essary unity of promise and realization: " [Abraham] being fully
persuaded that he who promised is equally capable of doing." The
announcement is the form the promise assumes in the contraction
of messianic time.
In this sense, understanding the meaning of the term euaggelion
implies an equal understanding of the terms pistis and
epaggelia. Yet one has to take into account that the Nomos
Pauline treatment of faith and promise is so tightly
interwoven with a critique of the law that the difficulties and apo-
92
rias implied i n these terms coincide fully with the difficulties and
aporias that arise in his critique of the nomos, and it is only in
working through the latter that one may enter into the former.
The aporetic quality of the Pauline treatment of the law was rec
ognized by the most ancient of commentators, especially Origen,
the first to systematically comment on the Letter to the Romans.
Two centuries of enigmatic silence precede him, barely broken by
a few citations that were not always in his favor. After Origen
came the endless flowering of commentary on Paul: in Greek, by
John Chrysostom, Didymus the Blind, Theodorus of Cyrene,
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril of Alexandria, and so forth; and in
Latin, the first being Marius Victorinus, who, even though he was
an exceedingly boring writer (Hadot never forgave himself for
having dedicated twenty years of his life to him) , nevertheless
played a central role as mediator between Greek and Christian cul
tures. Origen, an unparalleled theorist of interpretation, tells us he
was taught by a rabbi to compare the writings of Scripture to a
plethora of rooms in a house, each locked by key, one key to each
keyhole. But because someone entertained himself by jumbling up
the keys, they no longer belonged to the door in which they were
found. When Origen confronts the obscure quality of the Pauline
treatment of the law in the Letter to the Romans, he feels com
pelled afterward to complicate the rabbinical apologue and com
pares the text to a palace filled with magnificent rooms, each rooin
containing additional hidden doors. When the apostle composes
his writings, he enters one door and exits via another, without ever
being seen (per unum aditum ingressus per alium egredi, is how
Rufinus badly translates it; the original is lost; Origen 2001, 308) .
This is why, Origen says, we cannot understand the text and are
given the impression that Paul contradicts himself when he speaks
of the law. A century later, Ticonius-a profoundly interesting fig
ure, whose Book ofRules (Liber regularum) goes far beyond being
the first treaty on the interpretation of Scripture-claims to pro-'
vide "keys and lamps" (Ticonius, 3) with which to open and illu
minate the secrets of tradition, dedicating the longest of his regu-,
lae precisely to the aporias found in the Pauline treatment of the
The Fifth Day
93
law and the seeming contradictions between promIse and law

found therein.
The terms pertaining to this problem are well known. In the
Letter to the Romans as well as in the Letter to the Galatians, Paul
sets epaggelia and pistis on the one side against nomos on the other.
What matters to him is to situate faith, promise, and law with
respect to the decisive problem concerning the criteria of salva
tion, according to his affirmation in Romans 3 :20-"By works of
the law there shall be no flesh justified before God"-and 3 :28:
"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without
works of the law." Paul pushes his formulations here to the point
of almost sounding strongly antinomial, affirming that "what
things soever the law says, it says . . . in order that every mouth be
stopped and all the world become guilty before God," and that the
law is given, not for salvation but for "the knowledge [epignosis, "a
posteriori knowledge"] of sin (Rom 3:19-20) .
This is how promise becomes opposed to law in the following
verse, and even more explicitly, in the
Letter to the Galatians, how Abraham
Abraham and Moses
is played against Moses, so to speak.
"For the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not
to Abraham or to his seed, through the law, but through the jus
tice of faith" (Rom. 4:I3) . The promise made to Abraham pre
cedes Mosaic law genealogically since, according to Jewish
chronology, Mosaic law comes four hundred years after the
promise and is thus unable to revoke it. "The law, which was four
hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul a pact of God,
making the promise inoperative. For if the inheritance be of the
law, it is no more of the promise; but God gave it to Abraham by
promise. Wherefore then the law? It was added because of trans
gressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was
made" (Gal. 3 :17-I9) .
The antagonism here between epaggelia-pistis and nomos seems
to find its footing in the opposition of two completely heteroge
neous principles; however, the issue is not so straightforward. First
of all, Paul repeatedly seeks to reaffirm the sanctity and goodness
94
o f the law without any lingering strategic cunning ("Wherefore the

law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just and good";
Rom. Tn) . In addition, in the majority of instances Paul seems to
neutralize these antitheses in order to articulate a far more complex
relation between promise, faith, and law. This is why in Romans
3:31 he softens his usual antinomial gesture, even if it is in the form
of a rhetorical question: "Do we then make the law inoperative
through faith? Let it not be! We hold the law firm." In Galatians
3 :II-I2, the apostle seems to aporetically exclude any hierarchical
relation between faith and law: "But that no man is justified by the
law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, 'The just shall live by
faith.' And the law is not of faith, but 'He who puts these precepts
into practice shall live through them.'" The citation that fuses
Habakkuk 2:4 ("The just shall live by his faith") with Leviticus 18:5
(God tells Moses, "speak to the Israelites and among them . . . put
my laws and my precepts into practice and follow them, and he
who will have put them into practice will live in them") does not
imply an opposition or hierarchical subordination of law to faith as
much as it does an even tighter interrelation of the two, just as
Ticonius noted, as though each implicated and confirmed the
other in reciprocal fashion ( invicem jirmant) .
Let us attempt to unravel the terms of this aporia, which has
been commented on at length, by taking an even closer look at the
Pauline text. It is well known that in the Septuagint's and Paul's
Judeo-Greek, nomos can be read as a generic term with many
meanings. More than once, however, Paul goes to great lengths to
specify the way in which nomos is set against epaggelia and pistis.
At stake is the law in its prescriptive and normative aspect, which
he refers to as nomos ton entolon, "the law of the commandments"
(Eph. 2:I5)-(in the Septuagint, entoll is the translation of the
Hebrew word miswa, a legal precept; remember the 613 miswoth
that every Jew must observe!)-or even as the nomos ton ergon, the
"law of works" (Rom. 3:27-28) , meaning the law of acts carried
out in the execution of precepts. The antithesis therefore concerns
epaggelia and pistis, on the one hand, and on the other, not j ust the
Torah itself, but its normative aspect. This is why, in an important
The Fifth Day
95
passage (Rom. 3 :27) , Paul is able to set the nomos pisteos, the law
of faith, against the nomos ton ergon, the law of works. Rather than
being an antinomy that involves two unrelated and completely
heterogeneous principles, here the opposition lies within the
nomos itself, between its normative and promissive elements.
There is something in the law that constitutively exceeds the norm
and is irreducible to it, and it is this excess and this inner dialectic
that Paul refers to by means of the binomial epaggelia / nomos (the
first corresponding to faith, the second to works) . This is how, in
I Corinthians 9:21, having stated that he made himself hos anomos,
"as without law," along with those who are without law (meaning
goyim), he immediately rectifies this affirmation specifYing that he
is not anomos theou, "outside God's law," but ennomos christou, "in
the law of the Messiah." The messianic law is the law of faith and
not just the negation of the law. This, however, does not mean
substituting the old miswoth with new precepts; rather, it means
setting a non-normative figure of the law against the normative
figure of the law.
If this is this case, how should this non-normative aspect of the
law be understood? And what relation is there
between these two figures of the nomos? Let us begin Katargein
by answering the second question, starting with a
lexical observation. In order to convey the relation between
epaggelia-pistis and nomos--and, more generally, the relation
between the messianic and the law-Paul constantly uses one
verb, which gives us substance for reflection, since I happened to
make a discovery on this subject that was particularly surprising
for a philosopher. The discovery concerns the verb katargeo, a
true key word in the Pauline messianic vocabulary (twenty-six
of the twenty-seven occurrences in the New Testament are in
the Letters!) . Katargeo is a compound of argeo, which in turn
derives from the adjective argos, meaning "il1operative, not-at
work (a-ergos ) , inactive. " The compound therefore comes to
mean "1 make inoperative, 1 deactivate, 1 suspend the efficacy" (or
as Henri Estienne's Thesaurus grtcae linguae suggests, reddo aergon
et inejJicacem, facio cessare ab opere suo, tollo, aboleo) . As Estienne

has already noted, the verb is essentially New Testament, and as we
have seen, openly Pauline. Up until Paul, it is rarely used (it is
found in Euripides, in the context of "hands left idle," and in
Polybus, in a passage the Suda lexicon glosses as anenergeton einai,
"to be inoperative") . After Paul it appears frequently in the Greek
Fathers (146 occurrences in John Chrysostom alone) that obvious
ly derives from Paul and because of this is only indirectly helpful
in understanding Pauline usage. Before Paul, in a context
undoubtedly familiar to him, is the noteworthy usage of the form
argeo in the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew word that sig
nifies rest on Saturday (see, for example, 2 Macc. 5:25) . It is cer
tainly not by chance that the term used by the apostle to express
the effect of the messianic on works of the law echoes a verb that
signifies the sabbatical suspension of works.
You can find the twenty-six occurrences of the verb in the
Pauline text listed in New Testament lexicons; I will limit myself
to one relevant sampling. But first, one consideration on the gen
eral meaning of the term. As we have seen, this term (which is pru
dently rendered by Jerome as evacuari, "to empty out") does not
mean "to annihilate, to destroy"-or, as one recent lexicon sug
gests, "to make perish" : the latter states, "In addition to uttering
the powerful 'Let it be !' the creator utters the equally powerful
'Let it perish !' [katargeo being the negative equivalent of poieo] ."
Even the most elementary knowledge o f Greek would have shown
that the positive equivalent of katargeo is not poieo, but energeo, "I
put to work, I activate. " This is especially evident since Paul him
self plays on this connection in an important passage, which in
turn will furnish us with our first illustration: "For when we were
in the flesh, the passions of sin were enacted [energeito] through
the law in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now
we are de-activated [katergethemen, 'made inoperative'] from the
law" (Rom. 7: 5-6) . The etymological opposition with energeo
clearly demonstrates that katergeo signals a taking out of energeia,
a taking out of the act. (In the passive, it means no longer being
in the act, being suspended.) As we have seen, Paul is clearly famil
iar with the typically Greek opposition dynamis/energeia, poten-
The Fifth Day
97
tiality/act, which he uses more than once. In this opposition, the

messianic enacts an inversion that is completely analogous with
what Scholem describes as the conversive waw. Just as the latter
made the unfulfilled fulfilled and the fulfilled unfulfilled, here
potentiality passes over into actuality and meets up with its telos,
not in the form of force or ergon, but in the form of astheneia,
weakness. Paul formulates this principle of messianic inversion in
the potential-act relation in a well-known passage. Just as he asks
the Lord for liberation from the thorn lodged in his flesh, he
hears, "Power [or potentiality] realizes itself in weakness [dynamis
en astheneia teleitaz] " (2 Cor. 12:9) . This is repeated in the next
verse: "when I am weak, then am I powerful. "
How should we understand the telos o f a power realized in
weakness? Greek philosophy was well versed in the
principle according to which privation (steresis) and Astheneia
im-potentiality (adynamia) maintain a kind of
potentiality ("each thing is powerful either through having some
thing or through the privation of this same thing"; "every poten
tiality is im-potentiality of the same [potentiality] and with respect
to the same"; Metaphysics 1019b9-10, 1046a32) . According to Paul,
messianic power does not wear itself out in its ergon; rather, it
remains powerful in it in the form of weakness. Messianic dynamis
is, in this sense, constitutively "weak" -but it is precisely through
its weakness that it may enact its effects-"God has chosen weak
things of the world to shame the things which are mighty" ( I Cor.
1:27)
There is another aspect to this messianic inversion of the poten
tial-act relation. Just as messianic power is realized and acts in the
form of weakness, so too in this way does it have an effect on the
sphere of the law and its works, not simply by negating or anni
hilating them, but by de-activating them, rendering them inoper
ative, no-Ionger-at-work [non-piu-in-operaJ . This is the meaning
of the verb katargeo: just as, in the nomos, the power of the prom
ise was transposed onto works and mandatory precepts, so does
the messianic now render these works inoperative; it gives poten
tiality back to them in the form of inoperativity and ineffective-

ness. The messianic is not the destruction but the deactivation Qf
the law, rendering the law inexecutable [l)ineseguibilita) della legg-e] .
The Pauline afIirmations which state that, on the one hand, the
Messiah "will render all rule, authority, and power inoperative
[katargeseJ " (I Cor. 15:24) , and on the other, that the Messiah con
stitutes "the telos of the law" (Rom. 10:4) , can only be fully under
tood in this light. The question has been raised-with little
accompanying thought-as to whether or not telos means "end"
or "fulfillment." Only to the extent that the Messiah renders the
nomos inoperative, t.hat he makes the nomos no-Ionger-at-work
and thus restores it to the state of potentiality, only in this way
may he represent its telos as both end and fulfillment. The law can
be brought to fulfillment only if it is first restored to the inopera
tivity of power. As the highly original pericope in 2 Corinthians
3:12-13 states, the Messiah is telos tou katargoumenou, "fulfillment
out of that which has been de-activated," taken out of the act
namely, at one and the same time, deactivation and fulfil lment.
From this stems the ambiguity of the gesture in Romans 3:31,
which makes for the stum9ling block of every reading of the
Pauline critique of the law: 'fDo we then make the law inoperative
[katargoumen] through faith? No, we hold the law firm [his
tanomenJ ." The first commentators were quick to point out that
the apostle seems to contradict himself in this passage (contraria
sibi scribere, "he alleges against himself"; Origen 2001, 233); after
having declared many times that the messianic renders the law _.
inoperative, it seems that Paul affirms the contrary. In truth, the
apostle is merely elucidating the meaning of his terminus techni- ,
cus, taking it back to its etymological root. That which is deacti- ..
vated, taken out of energeia, is not annulled, but conserved_and
held onto for its fulfillment.
John Chrysostom analyzes this double meaning of Pauline
katargein in an extraordinary passage. When the apostle uses this
verb (for example, in the expression gnosis katargesthetai; I Cor.
13:8), what he is actually referring to ' 'in katargesis is not the
destruction of being (aphanisis tes ousias), but the progression
toward a better state.
The Fifth Day
99
This is the meaning of katergeitai, and he made it clear to us in the

words which follow. After you heard him say katergeitai, he did not wish
you to think of this as complete dissolution but as an increase and
advancement to something better. So after he had said katergeitai, he
went on to add: "Our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is
imperfect. When the perfect comes, then the imperfect will be rendered
inoperative [katargethesaz] . " So the imperfect no longer exists, but the
perfect does . . . . This is because the rendering inoperative [katargesis] is
a fulfillment [plerosis] and advancement to something better [pros to
meizon epidosis] . (Chrysostom, 5 5)
Messianic katargesis does not merely abolish; it preserves and brings

to fulfillment.
At this point, I must return to the discovery I alluded to concern
ing the posthumous life of the verb katargein in the
philosophical tradition. How does Luther translate Aufhebu ng
this Pauline verb, whether in Romans 3:31 or wherever else the verb occurs in the Letters? Luther uses Aujheben-the
ry word that harhors the double _meaning of abolishing and COIl'J
.serving (adfbewahren and aujhoren lassen) used by Hegel as a foundation for his dialectic! A closer look at Luther's vocabulary shows
that he is aware of the verb's double rneaning, which before him
occurs infrequently. This means that in all likelihood the term
acquires its particular facets through the translation of the Pauline
letters, leaving Hegl to pick it' up and develop it. It is because of
the word's having been used by Luther to convey the antinomial
gesture in Pauline katargesis in Romans 3 :31 (heben wir das Gesetz
auf!/ durch, den glauben? Das sey ferne / sondern wir richten das
Gesetz auf!) that the German verb then took on this double mean
ing--which was a "delight" for "speculative thought" (Hegel, 107) .

This is how a genuinely messianic terITl expressing the transforma
tion of the law impacted by faith and announcement becomes a
key term for the dialectic. That Hegel's dialectic is nothing more
than a secularization of Christian theology comes as no surprise;
however, more significant is the fact that (with a certain degree of
irony) Hegel used a weapon against theology furnished by theolo
gy itself and that this weapon is genuinely messianic.
100
I f this genealogy of Aufhebung that I am putting forth i s correct,

then not only is Hegelian thought involved in a tightly knit hermeneu
tic struggle with the messianic-in the sense that all of its determining
concepts are more or less conscious interpretations and secularizations
of messianic themes-but this also holds for modernity, by which I
intend the epoch that is situated under the sign of the dialectical
Aufhebung.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Aufhebung makes its appearance in
the context of the dialectic of sense ertainty and its expression in lan
guage via the "this" (diese) and the "flow" (jetzt) . Throughout the course
of the Aufhebung, Hegel simply describes the movement of language
itself in its possessing a "divine nature" that transforms sense certainty
into a negative and a nothingness and conserves this nothingness, con
verting the negative into being. In the "this" and the "now," the imme
diate is thus always already aufgehoben, lifted and preserved. Inasmuch
as the "now" has already ceased to be once it has been uttered (or writ
ten) , the attempt to grasp the "now" always produces a past, a gewesen,
which as such is kein Wesen, nonbeing. It is this nonbeing that is pre
served in language and is posited as such, as it truly is, only at the end.
The "Eleusinian mysteries" of sense certainty-the exposition of which
initiates the Phenomenology of Spirit-show themselves to be nothing
more than an exposition of the structure of linguistic signification in
general. To use the language of modern linguistics, as langu(lge refers to
its own taking place via shifters, the "this" and the "now," language pro
duces the sensible expressed in it as a past and at the same time defe rs
this sensible to the future. In this fashion, it is always already caught up
in a history and a time. In each case what is presupposed by the
Aufhebung is that what has been lifted is not completely eliminated, but
rather persists somehow and can thus be preserved ( w:tzs sich clUfhebt,
wird dadurch nicht zu Nichts, "What is sublated, is not thereby reduced
to nothing"; Hegel, 107) .
What is demonstrated here is both the connection and difference
between the problem of the Aufhebung and that of messianic time.
While messianic time (as operational time) also introduces a disconnec
tion and delay into represented time, this cannot be tacked onto time as
a supplement or as infinite deferment. To the contrary, the messianic
the 11l1graspable quality of the "now"-is the very opening through
which we may seize hold of time, achieving our representation of tiPle,
making it end. When the Torah is rendered inoperative in messianic
The Fifth Day
ror
katargesis, it is not caught up in a deferment or in an infinite displace

ment; rather, the Torah finds its pleroma therein. We find a genuinely
messianic exigency reemerge in Hegel in the problem of the pleroma of
times and the end of history. Hegel, however, thinks the pleroma not as
each instant's relation to the Messiah, but as the final result of a global
process. His French interpreters-Koyre and Kojeve, who are actually
Russian, which comes as no surprise given the importance of the apoc
alypse in twentieth-century Russian culture-thus start off with the
conviction that "in Hegelian philosophy, the 'system,' is only possible if
history is over, if there is no more future and if time stops" (Koyre, 458).
But what happens here, as is dearly the case in Kojeve, is that both of
these\ interpretations end up Battening out the messianic onto the escha
'
!ologbl, thus confounding the problem of messianic time with the
problem of posthistory. The fact that the ' concept of deceuvrement-a
good translation of Pauline katargein-first appears in twentieth-century philosophy precisely in Kojeve, in his definition of the post-historical
condition of man, the voyou desceuvre as the " Shabbat of man" (Kojeve,
458) , is enough to prove that the connection here to the messianic has
not yet been completely neutralized.
Analogous conclusions could be drawn for the oncepts of privative
opposition, degree zero, and the surplus of the >signifier
in twentieth-century human sciences, as wdl as for the Degree Zero
trace and the originary supplement in contemporary
thought. In Trubetzkoy, the concept of privative opposition defines an
opposition in which one of two terms is characterized by the existence
of a mark, the other by the lack thereof What is presupposed is that the
unmarked term is not simply opposed to the marked one as an absence
(a nothing) is opposed to a presence, but that nonpresence is in some
manner equivalent to a zero-degree presence (meaning that presence is
lacking in its absence) . According to Trubetzkoy, this is shown when,
once the opposition is neutralized, the marked term loses its value and
the unmarked one remains as the only relevant one. Thus, the
unmarked one takes on the role of archiphoneme, representing all dis
tinctive traits common to both terms. (When Trubetzkoy speaks of
.
"neutralization" he uses the term Aujhebung, and not by chance, since in
the Science ofLogic it implies the unity of opposites.) In the Aujhebung,
the unmarked term-being a sign of lacking-a-sign..:...--counts as an
archiphoneme, a zero-degree signification, and the opposition is both
lifted and preserved as the zero degree of difference. (It was Jakobson
102
who, i n Bally's steps, initiated systematic use of the terms "zero sign" and
"zero phoneme" instead of "unmarked degree" and "archiphoneme. " In
this way, for Jakobson, even though the zero phoneme does not imply
any differential factor, it works by opposing itself to the mere absence of
phoneme. The philosophical grounds for this concept are found in the
Aristotelian ontology of privation. In the Metaphysics [IOo4a16] ,
Aristotle makes a point to distinguish privation [steresis] from mere
_absence [apousia] , inasmuch as privation still implies a reference t !he
being or form deprived which manifests itself through its- Tack. This is
why Aristotle writes that privation is a kind of eidos, a form.)
In 1957, Levi-Strauss developed these concepts in his theory of the sig
nifier's constitutive surplus in its relation to the signified. According to
this theory, signification always exceeds the signifieds that could match
up with it. This gap between the two then translates into the existence
of free or floating signifiers in themselves void of meaning, yet with the
sole function of conveying the gap between signifier and signified. What
we have are therefore non-signs, or signs in the state of de(Euvrement and
Aufhebung, "with a zero symbolic value, that is, a sign marking the neces
sity of a supplementary symbolic content" (Levi-Strauss, 64) ; they ar
set in opposition to the absence of signification without standing in for
any particular meaning.
Beginning with Speech and Phenomena and Of Grammatology (1967),
Derrida restored philosophical standing to these concepts, demonstrat
ing their connectedness to Hegelian Aufhebung and developing them
into an actual ontology of the trace and originary supplement. In his
careful deconstruction of Husserlian phenomenology, Derrida critiques
the primacy of presence in the metaphysical tradition and shows how
metaphysics always already presupposes nonpresence and signification.
This is the setting in which he introduces the concept of an "originary
supplement," which is not simply added onto something but comes to
supplement a lack and nonoriginary presence both of which are always
already caught up in a signifYing. "What we would ultimately like to
draw attention to is that the for-itself of self-presence (for-sich)-tradi
tionally determined in its dative dimension as phenomenological self
giving, whether reflexive or prereflexive-arises in the role of supple
ment as primordial substitution, in the form 'in the place of' (for etwas),
that is, as we have seen, in the very operation of significance in general"
(Derrida 1973, 88-89) . The concept of the "trace" names the impossibil.:. ,
ity of a sign to be extinguished in the fullness of a present and absolute
The Fifth Day
103
presence. In this sense, the trace must be conceived as "before being," the
thing itself; always already as sign and repraesentamen, the signified
always already in the position of signifier. There is no nostalgia for ori
gins since there is no origin. The origin is produced as a retroactive effect
of nonorigin and , a trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin.
These concepts (or better yet, these nonconcepts, or even as Derrida
prefers to call them, these "undecidables") call into question. the prima
cy of presence and signification for the pl1ilosophical tradition, yet they
do not truly call into question signification in general. In radicalizing the
notio of steresis and zero degree, these concepts presuppose both the
exclusion of presence and the impossibility of an extinguishing of the
sign. They therefore presuppose that there is still signification beyond
presence and absence, meaning that nonpresence still signifies some
thing, it posits itself as an "arche-trace," a sort of archiphoneme between
presence and absence. If there is no nostalgia for origins here, it is
because its memory is contained in the form of signification itself, as
Aufhebung and zero degree. In order for deconstruction to function,
what must be excluded is not the fact that that presence and origin are
lacking but that they are purely insignificant. Therefore the sign of this
excess must be absolutely excessive as concerns all possible presence
absence, all possible production or disappearance of beings in general,
and yet, in some manner it must still signify. . . The mode of inscription
of such a trace in the text of metaphysics is so unthinkable that it must
be described as an erasure of the trace itself The trace is produced as its
own erasure" (Derrida I982, 65) . In this instance, the arche-trace simul
taneously shows its link to-and difference from-the Hegelian
. Aufhebung with its messianic theme. In this context, the movement of
the Aujhebung, which neutralizes signifieds while maintaining and
achieving signification, thus becomes a principle of infinite deferment. A
signification that only signifies itself can never seize hold of itself, it can
never catch up with a void in representation, nor does it ever allow any
thing to be an in-significance; rather, it is displaced and deferred in one
and the same gesture. In this way, the trace is a suspended Aufhebung
that will never come to know its own pleroma. Deconstruction is a
thwarted messianism, a suspension of the messianic.
In our tradition, a metaphysical concept, which takes as its prime focus
a moment of foundation and origin, coexists with a messianic concept,
which focuses on a moment of fulfillment. What is essentially messian
ic and historic is the idea that fulfillment is possible by retrieving and
104
revoking foundation, by coming to terms with it. When these two ele
ments are split up, we are left with a situation like the one so clearly wit
nessed in Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences, that of a foundation
which is part and parcel of an infinite task. If we drop the messianic
theme and only focus on the moment of foundation and origin-or
even the absence thereof (which amounts to the same thing)-we are
left with empty, zero degree, signification and with history as its infinite
deferment.
How should we think the state of the law under the effect of mes
sianic katargesis? What is a law that is
State of Exception simultaneously suspended and fulfilled?
In answering this question, I found there
to be nothing more helpful than the epistemological paradigms at
the center of the work of a jurist who developed his conception of
law and the sovereign state according to an explicitly anti-mes
sianic constellation. But for this very reason, insofar as he is, in
Taubes's words "an apocalypticist of counterrevolution," he can
not help but introduce some genuinely messianic theologoumena
into it. According to Schmitt, whom you will have already identi
fied without my naming him, tbe paradigm that defines the prop:
er functioning and structure of the law is not the norm, but the
exception.
The exception most clearly reveals the essence of the state's authority.
The decision parts here from the legal norm, and (to formulate it para
doxically) authority proves that to produce law it need not be based on
law [die Autoritdt beweist, daJ5 sie, um Recht zu schaffen, nicht Recht zu
haben braucht] . . . . The exception is more interesting than the normal
case [Normalfall] . The normal [das Normale] proves nothing; the excep
tion proves everything: The exception does not only confirm the rule
[Regel ] ; the rule as such lives ofF the exception alone (Schmitt 198 5 ,
13-15) .
It is important to remember that in the exception, what is

excluded from the norm does not simply have no bearing on the
law; on the contrary, the law maintains itself in relation to the
eJCception in the form of its own self-suspension. The norm is '
_ applied, so to speak, to the exception in dis-applying itself, in
, The Fifth Day
105
withdrawing itself from it. In this way, the exception is not a mere
exclusion, but an inclusive exclusion, an ex-ceptio in the literal sense
of the term: a seizing of the outside. In defining the exception, the
law simultaneously creates and defines the space in which juridi
cal-political order is granted value. In this sense, for Schmitt, the
state of exception represents the pure and originary form of the
enforcement of the law, and it is from this point only that the law
may define the normal sphere of its application.
Let us take a closer look at the fundamental features of the law
in the state of exception:
1. First and foremost, there is an absolute indeterminacy
between inside and outside. This is what S chmitt conveys in the
paradox of the sovereign. To the extent that the sovereign has the
legitimate power to suspend the validity of the law, he is both
inside and outside the law. If, in the state of exception, the law is
in force in the form of its suspension, being applied in disapply
ing itself: then the law thus includes, so to speak, that which is
rejected from itself: Or, if you prefer, this means that there is no
"Qp.tside" of the law. In the; state of sovereign autosuspension, the
law thus eets up with the utmost limit of its enforcement and,
in including its outside in the form of the exception, it coincides
with reality itself:
2. If this is true, then in the state of exception it becomes impos
sible to distinguish between observance [osservanza] and trans
gression of the law. When,the law is in force only in the form of
its suspension, no matter what mode of behavior appears to be in
line with the law in a normal situation-like walking peacefully
down the street-this behavio'r might also imply a transgression
as, for example, in the case of a curfew. Vice versa, the transgres
sion may even be conceived of as carrying out the law. In this
sense, one could say that in the state of exception, the law, inas
much as it simply coincides with reality, is absolutely unobservable
[ineseguibile] , and that unobservability [ ineseguibilita] is the origi
nary figure of the norm.
3. One corollary of this unobservability of the norm is that in
the state of exception, the law is absolutely unformulatable [ infor-
106
mulabile] . It no longer has, or does not yet have, the form of a pre
scription or a prohibition. This unformulability [informulabilita]
is to be taken to the letter. Let us consider the state of exception

at its extreme: the one established in Germany by the Decree for
the Protection of the People and the State, on February 28, 1933,
immediately following the acquisition of power by the Nazi party.
This decree simply states: "The articles II4, II5, II?, II8, 123, 124,
and 153 of the Constitution of the Reich are suspended until fur
ther orders" (the decree remained in force over the entire course of
the Nazi regime) . Jhis laconic statement neither orders nor pro
hibits anything. But by simply suspending the articles of the
Constitution pertaining to personal freedom, it becomes impossi
ble to know or articulate what is licit and illicit. The concentra
tion camps, where everything becomes possible, issue from the
space that is opened up by the unformulability of the law. Thi
means that in the state of exception, the law is not configured as
of a new body of norms that spells out new prohibitions and new
duties, but that the law enacts itself only by means of its unEoL
mulability.
Let us now compare the threefold articulation of the law in the
state of exception with the state of the law in the horizon of mes
sianic katargesis.
Concerning the first point (on the indiscernability of an outside
and inside of the law) : as we have seen,
Jews and non-Jews, those who are within the law and those who
are outside, no longer holds in the messianic. This does not mean
that Paul simply extends the application of the law to the on
Jews; rather, he makes Jews and non-Jews, inside and outside the
law, indistinguishable from each other by introducing a remnant.
This remnant-the non-non-Jews-is neither properly inside nor
outside, neither ennomos no{ anomos (according to the way Paul
defines himself in I Cor. 9:21) ; it is the cipher of messianic deacti
vation of the law, the cipher of its katargesis. The remnant is an
exception taken to its extreme, pushed to its paradoxical formulation. In his rendering of the messianic condition of the believer,
Paul radicalizes the condition of the state of exception, whereby
The Fifth Day
107
law is applied in dis applying itself: no longer having an inside or

an outside. With regard to this law that applies itself in disapply-,
ing itself: a corresponding gesture of faith ensues, applying itself in
disapplying itself: rendering law inoperative while carrying it tQits
fulfillment.
Paul calls this paradoxical figure of the law in the state of mes
sianic exception nomos pisteos, "the law of faith" (Rom. 3:27) , as it
can no longer be defined through works, the execution of the mis
woth, but as a manifestation of "justice without law" (dikaiosyne
choris nomou; Rom. 3 : 21) . This amounts, more or less, to "observ
ing the law without law," especially if one takes into consideration
the fact that in Judaism, justice is, par excellence, with him who
observes the law. This is why Paul says that the law of faith is th
suspension-literally, the' "exclusion"-(exekleisthe; Rom. 3 : 27) of
the law of works. Paul's formulation of this dialectical aporia,
which affirms that faith is both deactivation (katargein) and
preservation (histanein) of the law, is nothing more than the
coherent expression of this paradox. Justice without law is not the
negation of the law, but the realization and fulfillment, the
pleroma, of the law.
s for the last two instances elf the state of exception, the unob
servability and unformulability of the law, they appear in Paul as
the necessary consequences of the exclusion of works brought on
by the law of faith. The entire critique of the nomos in Romans
3 :9-20 is no more than a clear-cut enunciation of a real messianic
principle of the unobservability of the law: "There is not a just
one, not even one . . . . Now we know that whatever the law says
applies to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may
be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Because
by works of law not one of all flesh will be justified before Him."
The particular expression Paul uses in verse 12, "all echreothesan,"
which Jerome translates as inutiles facti sunt, literally means (a
chreioo) "they were made unable to use," and perfectly conveys the
impossibility of use, the unobservability that characterizes the law
in messianic time, which only faith may restore in chresis, in use.
The well-known description of the division of the subject in
108
Romans 7:15-19 ( " I know not what I d o . . . for I d o not d o what

I want . . . what I do not want, this I do") is a perfectly clear read
ing of the agonizing condition of a man faced with a law that has
become entirely unobservable, and, as such, only functions as a
universal principle of imputation.
Shortly before this, Paul's drastic abbreviation of Moses' com
mandment-which did not simply say, "Do not desire," but "Do
not desire the woman, the house, the slave, the mule, and so
on . . . of thy neighbor"-renders the commandment unobserv
able and equally impossible to formulate: "What shall we say
then? Is the law sin? Let it not be! But I did not know sin except
through law; for also I did not know lust except the law said, 'You
shall not lust'" (Rom. 7:7) . The law here is no longer entole, a
norm that clearly prescribes or prohibits something ("Do not
desire" is not a commandment); instead, the law is only- -dle
knowledge of guilt, a trial in the Kafkaesque sense of the term, a
perpetual self-accusation without a precept.
On the side of faith, the counterpart to this contraction of
Mosaic law is the messianic recapitulation of the commandments;
Paul refers to it in Romans 13 : 8-9: "For the one who loves anoth
er has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, 'You must not
commit adultery; you must not murder; you must not steal; you
must not covet,' and every oiher commandment is summed up in
this statement: 'You must love your neighbor as yourself'" Once
he divides the law into a law of works and a law of faith, a law of
sin and a law of God (Rom. 7: 22.,.-23)-and thus renders it inop
erative and unobservable-Paul can then fulfill and recapitulate
the law in the figure of love. The messianic pleroma of the law is '
an Aujhebung of the state of exception, an absolutizing of
katargesis.
We should now turn to the enigmatic passage in 2 Thessalonians
2:3-9 on katechon. In speaking of
The Mystery of Anomia the parousia of the Messiah, Paul
warns the Thessalonians of the anx- '
iety that may be produced by the announcement of the Messiah's
lInmmence:
The Fifth Day
109
Let no one deceive you in any way. Because it will not be unless the
apostasy shall have come first, and the man of lawlessness, the son of
destruction, is revealed. He opposes and exalts himself above every so
called god and object of worship. As a result, he seats himself in the
sanctuary of God and declares himself to be God. Don't you remember
that I repeatedly told you about these things when I was still with you?
You know what it is that is now holding him back [ho katechon] , so that
he will be revealed when his time comes. For the mystery of anomy
(anomia) is already at work, but only until the person now holding him
back [ho katechon] is removed. Then the lawless one [anomos] will be
revealed, whom the Lord will abolish with the breath of his mouth, ren
dering him inoperative by the manifestation of his presence [parousia] .
The presence [parousia] of the former is according to the working of
Satan in every power [dynamis] .
If the identification of the "lawless one" with the Antimessiah
(antichristos) from the Letter of John is generally accepted-even
if this identilfi cation still harbors problems-the question remains

of who or wJiat the katechon is (in the impersonal form in verse 6,
and in the personal form in verse 7) . An ancient tradition, which
is already found in Tertullian, identifies t1;le pwer which delays or
maintains the end of time as the Roman Empire, which in this
sense has a positive historical function. (This is why Tertullian
says, "We pray for the permanence of the world [pro statu saecult] ,
for peace in things, for the delay of the end [pro mora finis] .") This
tradition culminates in the Schmittian theory that finds in 2
Thessalonians 2 the only possible foundation for a Christian doc
trine of State power:
Essential to this Christian errlpire was that it never consisted in an eter
nal reign and that it always kept in mind its own end as well as the end
of the present eon, and despite all this, that it was still capable of exert
ing a historical power. The decisive and historically powerful concept
that grounded its continuity was the concept of the "arresting force," the
kat-echon. "Empire" here means the historical power that is capable of
arresting the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the current eon. A
force qui tenet, according to the words of the apostle Paul in the second
letter to the Thessalonians . . . . I do not believe that any other concept
of history than the kat-echon is possible for an originary Christian faith.
no
The belief i n a n arresting force that can stave off the end of the world
is the only link leading from the eschatological paralysis of every
human action to such a great historical agency [ GeschichtsmachtigkeiiJ
as that of the Christian empire at the time of the Germanic kings.
(Schmitt 1997, 29)
Things do not change much for those modern interpreters who

link katechon with God himself and take the delay of the parousia
to be an expression of the divine plan of salvation ("the katechon,
understood correctly, is God himself. . . . It is not a matter of a
worldly force that would delay the coming of the Antichrist, but
of delaying the parusia implied in the divine temporal plan";
Strobel, 106-7) .
As you can see, a great deal is at stake here. In a certain sense,
every theory of the State, including Hobbes's-which thinks of it
as a power destined to block or delay catastrophe-can be taken
as a secularization of this interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2. Yet ,
the fact remains that despite its obscurity, this Pauline passage
does not harbor any positive valuation of katechon. To the con
trary, it is what must be held back in order that the "mystery of
anomia" be revealed fully. The interpretation of verses 7-9 is
therefore decisive:
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work [energeitaz] , but only
until the person now holding it back [ho katechon] gets out of the way.
Then the lawless one [anomos] will be revealed, whom the Lord will
destroy with the breath of his mouth, . rendering him inoperative
[katargesez] by the manifestation of his presence [parousia] . The presence
[parousia] of the former is according to the working of Satan in every
power [kat'energeian tou satana en pase dynamez] .
Anomia should not be translated here, as it is in Jerome, by the

generic "iniquity" or the even worse rendering "sin. " Anomia can
only mean "absence of law" and anomos the one outside the law
(remember that Paul presents himself to the gentiles as being hos
anomos) . Paul is thus referring to the condition of the law in messianic time, when the nomos is rendered inoperative and is in a
state of katargesis. This is why Paul's technical vocabulary con-
The Fifth Day
III
cerning energeia and dynamis, being i n the act (energein) and being
inoperative (katargesis) reappears in this instance. The katechon is
therefore the force-the Roman Empire as well as every consti
tuted authority-that clashes with and hides katargesis, the state of
tendential lawlessness that characterizes the messianic, and in this
sense delays unveiling the "mystery of lawlessness." The unveiling
of this mystery entails bringing to light the inoperativity of the law
and the substantial illegitimacy of each and every power in mes
sianic time.
It is therefore possible to conceive of katechon and anomos not
as two separate figures (unlike John, Paul never mentions an
antichristos) , blf 'as one single power before and after the final
unveiling. Profane power-albeit of the Roman Empire or any
other power-is the semblance that covers up the substantial law
lessness [anomia] of messianic time. In solving the "mystery," sem
blance is cast out, and power assumes the figure of the anomos, of
that which is the absolute outlaw [del fuorilegge assoluto] . This is
how the messianic is fulfilled in the clash between the two parou
siai: between that of the anomos, who is marked by the working of
Satan in every power [potenza] , and that of the Messiah, who will
render energeia inoperative in it. (An explicit reference is made
here to I Corinthians 1 5 :24: ''Afterwards the end, when he delivers
the kingdom to God and the father, when he will render inoper
ative all rule, and all authority [potesta] and power") ; 2 Thess. 2
may not be used to found a "Christian octrine" of power in any
manner whatsoever.
'6 With this in mind, it may be helpful to look at the relation between
Nietzsche and this Pauline passage. It is seldom asked why
Nietzsche entitled his declaration of war on Christianity Antichrist
and Paul The Anti-Christ. And yet, in the Christian tradition, the Antichrist is precisely the figure that marks the end of time and
the triumph of Christ over every p ower-including "this most
admirable of all works of art in the grand manner" (Nietzsche, 85),
which Nietzsche calls the Roman Empire. One cannot seriously believe
that Nietzsche was unaware that the "man of lawlessness"-the precise
figure through which he identified himself as an Antichrist-was a
II2
Pauline invention. His gesture-of signing his declaration of war against

Christianity in the name of a figure that belonged entirely to that tradi
tion. and played a specific role therein-must harbor some parodic
intention. The Anti-Christ can therefore be read as a messianic parody
in which Nietzsche, in cloaking himself in the garments of the
Antimessiah, is actually only reciting a script written by Paul. We can
then understand why, in the subtitle, the book already presents itself as
a "curse" and concludes with the emanation of a "law" with messianic
pretenses ("dated on the day of salvation") being nothing but a "curse of
holy history." Not only is this identification between law and curse gen
uinely Pauline (Gal. 3:I3: "The Messiah has redeemed us from the curse
of the law [ek tes kataras tou nomou]"), but the idea that the "man of law
lessness" is unable to do anything but enact this law-curse is itself a
lucidly ironic reading of katechon in 2 Thessalonians 6:7.
The Sixth Day

(Eis euaggelion theou)
At the beginning of this seminar I spoke of Buber's Two Tj;pes of

Faith, in which the author opposes Jewish emunah, the immediate
flEiD the community in which one lives, to Pauline pistis, the act
of recognizing something as true. In 1987, David Flusser, a profes
sor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who was preparing an
afterword for a newer German edition of this book, was strolling
down a street in Athens when he saw the following written on a
door: Trapeza emporikes pisteos. Wondering where this enigmatic
formula with the word pistis came from, he stopped and realized
that it was simply a part of the jnsignia of what is called the "Bank
of Commercial Credit." Because of this, Flusser was able to con
firm something he had known all along: that from a linguistic
standpoint there was no real foundation for Buber's opposing
emunah and pistis. Flusser notes, "The Greek pistis means precise
ly the same thing as the Hebrew emunah" (Buber, 2II) . The sig
nificance of a book like Buber's thus had to be found elsewhere,
and as we shall see, Flusser did just this in a very cunning way.
If pistis does not mean "to recognize as true," and if this means
that we cannot speak of two types of faith, how then
Oath
should we understand the meaning of pistis in Paul's
text? And, above all, what meaning does the family of
the word pistis harbor in Greek? One of the most ancient mean
ings of the term pistis and the adjective pistos is as a synonym--or
II3
II4
a n attributive, i n the case of pistos (trustworthy)-of the term

horkos, oath, in expressions like pistin kai horka poieisthai, "to take
an oath," or pista dounai kai lambanein, "to exchange oaths. " In
Horner, oaths, horkia, are pista, "trustworthy," par excellence. In
ancient Greece, horkos designated both the oath and the object held
at the time of the oath's pronouncement. This object had the power
to kill off the perjurer (epiorkos) and thus made for the best guar
antee of the oath's being fulfilled. Even the gods, who swore on the
water of the Styx, were not exempt from the terrifying power of the
horkos. The immortal who committed perjury lay lifeless on the
ground for a year and was excluded from the presence of the gods
for an additional nine years. The oath thus belongs to one of the
most archaic areas of the law, the sphere French scholars call prt
droit, literally, prelaw, a prejuridical sphere in which magic, reli
gion, and law are absolutely indiscinible from one anothyr. (One
could even define "magic" as the zone of indistinction between reli
pistis is tightly bound up
gion and law.) But this means that
in its origin with oath and only
on the technical-juridical
meaning of "guarantee" and "credit" later on, it then it comes from
this same obscure prehistoric background. Even more significantly,
this means that when Paul sets pistis against law, he does not intend
to set a new and luminous element against the "antiquity of the
nomos." Rather, he plays one element of prelaw against the other,
or, at the very least, he tries to disentangle two elements that pres
ent themselves as being tightly interwoven at their origin.
One of the achievements of a great Sephardic linguist, perhaps
the greatest linguist of the twentieth century, Emile Benvniste,
entailed using purely linguistic data to reconstruct the originary
features of this most ancient Indo-European institution, which the
Greek called pistis and the Latin jz'des, and which he defined as
fidtlitt personnelle, "personal loyalty." "Faith" (or trust) is the cred
it that one enjoys in another, the result of placing our trust in him,
having consigned something like a pledge to him that links us in
a relation of loyalty. For this reason faith is just as mudLthe _trust
that we grant someone, the faith we place in someone, as it is the
trust we enjoy on behalf of someone, the faith or the credit that
we possess. In this light, the long-standing problem of the two sym-
The Sixth Day
II5
metrical meanings o f the term "faith," as active and passive, objec

tive and subjective, "a (provided) guarantee" and "inspired confi
dence," which Eduard Frankel had highlighted in a well-known
essay, can be explained without a glitch:
The one who holds the fides placed in him by a marl has this man at his
mercy. This is why fideS' becomes almost synonymous with dicio and
potestaS'o In their primitive form these relations involved a certain reci
procity, placing one's fides in somebody secured in return his gua;amee
and his support. But this very fact underlines the inequality of the con
ditions. It is authority which is exercised at the same time as protection
for somebody who submits to it, an exchange for, and to the extent of,
his submission (Benveniste 1973, 97-98).
In this same vein, the strong tia between the two Latin terms fides
and credere, which is so significant in its Christian ' context,
becomes easily comprehensible: according to Benveniste, credo lit
erally means "to give *kred:" that is, to place magical powers in a
person from whom one expects protection, and thus "to believe"
in him. And because the old root-word *kred' disappeared in
Latin, the word fides, which expressed a very similar concept, took
its place as a substantive corresponding to credo.
In reconstructing this notion of [prsonal loyalty, Benveniste
barely mentions the so-to-speak political aspect of this institution,
in turn highlighted by Salvatore Calderone,
which did not involve individuals as much Deditio in Fidem
as it did the city and the people. At times of
war, the enemy city could be conquered and destroyed by force
(kata kratos) and its inhabitants killed or enslaved. But, on the
other hand, what could also happen was that the weaker city could
take recourse to the institution of the deditio in fidem, meaning
that they could unconditionally surrender themselves to the hands
of the enemy, making the victor hold to a more benevolent con
duct (Calderone, 38-41) . In this instance, the city could be saved
and its inhabitants granted a personal freedom, while not being
completely free. They comprised a special group, called the
n6
dediticii, who "gave themselves over" as what we would nowadays

call tateless people. We should perhaps keep this particular group
of nonslaves who were not completely free in mind when think
ing of the status of the members of the messianic community
according to Paul. This institution of giving oneself over was
called pistis by the Greeks (dounai eis pistin, peithesthai ) and fides
by the Romans ( in fidem populi Romani venire or se tradere, "to
deliver oneself into the fides of the Roman people") . Let me first
point out two important observations on this subject. Once again,
we witness the direct connection and almost synonym9lJ.s quality
between faith and oath that we noted from the start. In all likeli
hood, this synonymy finds its raison d'etre in this very context.
The city and the people who were mutually linked together
through the dedito in fidem exchanged solemn oaths to sanction
this bond, yet on the other hand, as the etymological link between
fides and fledus implies-well known to the Romans-this rela
tion grants for numerous analogies to be made with a pact or
treaty of alliance between people, even though modern scholars
prefer to speak of "pseudotreaties" in the context of the deditio in
fidem, in their desire to highlight the disparity between respective
conditions.
In the Greco-Roman world, faith thus possesses a complex char
acter, being both juridico-political and religious, and originating
in the most ancient sphere of prelaw. But the tie to the juridical
sphere never disappears, neither in Rome, where jurists elaborated
on the notion of bona fides, a notion essential to the history of
modern law, nor in Greece, where pistis and pistos referred t the
credit and trust derived from contractual bonds in general.
If we want to comprehend the meaning that underlies the
opposition between pistis and nomos in the Pauline text, we should
keep in mind this rooting of faith in the sphere of the law-or
rather, in prelaw, that is, where law, politics, and religion become
tightly interwoven. In Paul, pistis retains something of the deditio,
the unconditional self abandon to the power of another, which ..
obliges the receiver as well.
The Sixth Day
I I7
Similar considerations could be made for the Hebrew emunah.

As you know, in the Bible Yahweh makes a berit, a pact or
a_cO-venant with Israel, by virtue of which, as we read in Berit
Deuteronomy 26:17-19:
Thou hast avouched the Lord this day t o b e thy God, and t o walk i n his
ways, and to keep to-his statutes, and his commandments, and his judg
ments, and to hearken unto his voice . . . and you will be his special peo
ple, as he hath promised you, and that thou shouldest observe all his
And on these conditions that he bestow thee high above all
nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honor; and
that thou mayest be an holy people to Yahweh, your God, as he hath
spoken.
Now as much as it may embarrass those theologians who prefer to

speak of a theological intention being actualized in juridical terms,
this berit cannot be distinguished from a juridical pact like the one
between Jacob and Laban (Gen. 31:44 ff. ) . In both cases, berit des
ignates a kind of sworn covenant whereby two parties are bound
together in reciprocal trust. Thus the berit seems to belong to the
same sphere of prelaw at the origin of what Benveniste recon
structs as the relation of personal loyalty. The "blood of the
covenant" (Exod. 24:8, reiterated in Matt. 26:28) that Moses
sheds, half on the altar (which represents Yahweh) and half on the
people, is not so much a sacrifice as it is a sanctioning of the most
intimate union established between the two contracting parties of
the pact. This is why in Hebrew one speaks of "cutting a berit'
exactly in the way the Greek speaks of horkia temnein and the
Latin of Joedus ferire. The problem of whether the berit between
Yahweh and Israel is a theological pact or a juridical pact loses sig
nificance once it is taken back to the sphere of personal loyalty and
prelaw. lAs we have seen, distinctions of this sort are .untenabl in
this sphere. (One definition of Judaism which is not that bad, is
that of an implacable reflection on the paradoxical situation that
emerges out of the desire to establish juridical relations with God.)
Thus the Hebrew word emunah signifies the very conduct that
should result from the berit, and in this way corresponds perfect
ly with the Greek pistis. In addition, according to the symmetrical
lI8
structure that defines the relation o f loyalty, emunah i s just as much

the faith of men as it is the faith of Yahweh. This is seen in Deut.
7:9 where (according to the Greek of the Septuagint) pistos is God's
attribure par excellence: "Know therefore that the Lord thy God is
a faithful [pistos ne eman] God, which keepeth covenant [diatheke
berit] and his mercy [eleos hesed] with them that love him and
keep his commandments to a thousand generations." Not only does
the relation between faith and pact, pistis and the pact of personal
loyalty between Yahweh and Israel, become evident in this passage,
but Paul's other concept of charis, grace, which is opposed to laws
and works of law, also finds its precursor in hesed, the goodness and
favor that God reserves for his faithful (even if the Septuagint trans
lates hesed with eleoS' and reserves the word charis for hen) .
I think that at this point it becomes clear why we can say that in
Paul's setting pistis and nomos against each other, he does not mere
ly oppose two heterogeneous elements. Rather, he brings to the fore
two figures, two levels, or two elements that are present within the
law-or within prelaw-in order to play them against each other,
so to speak. What are these two levels? We saw that Paul calls the
first epaggelia, "promise," or diatheke, "pact," and the second entole,
"commandment" (or nomos ton entolon). In Genesis I 5 :I8, the prom
ise made by Yahweh to Abraham, which is so crucial to Paul's strat
egy, is defined simply as diatheke and is Yahweh's originary pact with
the descendants of Abraham. This pact precedes the pact of Mosaic
law in every way (this is why in Ephesians 2:I2 Paul refers to them
as diathekai tes epaggelias, pacts of the p omise) . If we were to trans
late the Pauline antitheses into the language of modern law, we
could say that Paul plays the constitution against positive law. Or
even more precisely, we could say that he plays the level of consti
tutive power against the level of established law [diritto costituitoJ., In
so doing, the Schmittian thesis on political theology ("the most
meaningful concepts of the modern doctrine of the State are secu
larized theological concepts") receives further confirmation. The
caesura between constitutive and constituted power, a divide that
becomes so apparent in our times, finds its theological origins in the
Pauline split between the level of faith and that of nomos, between
personal loyalty and the positive obligation that derives from it. In
this light, messianism appears as a struggle, within the law, whereby
the element of the pact and constituent power leans toward setting
The Sixth Day

itself against and emancipating itself from the element of the entoll,
the norm in the strict sense. The messianic is therefore the histori
cal process whereby the archaic link between law and religion
(which finds its magical paradigm in horkos, oath) reaches a crises
and the element of pistis, of faith in the pact, tends paradoxically to
emancipate itself from any obligatory conduct and from positive
law (from works fulfilled in carrying out the pact) .
This is why we witness the theme of grace (charis) emerge so
insistently alongside the theme of faith in
Paul. Once again, as Benveniste demonstrated Gratuitousness
(Benveniste 1973, 160), charis essentially signifies a gratuitous service, freed from contractual obligations of
counterservice and command. The significance of the opposition
between law [legge] and grace (expressed in Romans 6:24) is read
ily misunderstood when not situated in its proper context, that of
the rupture of the originary unity between epaggelia and nomos,
law [diritto] and religion in the sphere of prelaw [prediritto] . l It is
not a matter of opposing two heterogeneous principles and
excluding works in favor of faith, but of coming to terms with the
aporia that emerges from this rupture. That which dissolves, along
with the link between religion and law [diritto] ' is the link
between service and counterservice, between execution and com
mand. In this sense, what you have on the one side is a law that is
"holy and just and good" -but which has become unobservable
and incapable of producing salvation, namely the sphere of the
law [diritto] in the strict sense-and on the other side, a faith,
although originally deriving from the pact, that can make salva
tion operative "without law" [senza legge] . Having once been unit
ed in prelaw in a magical indifference, faith and law now fracture
and give way to the space of gratuitousness [gratuita] . In the
sphere of personal loyalty where faith finds its origin, faith obvi1. Translator's note. Unless indicated, all instances of the word "law" refer
to the Italian "legge." In most of the European languages there are two dif
ferent words for distinguishing the abstract and the concrete senses of the
word law. in Italian legge and diritto, in Latin lex and ius, in German Gesetzt
and Recht , in French loi and droit, and so on) . The first of each pair refers to
particular laws and so-called positive laws, i.e. laws that are actually legislat
ed and enforced. The second of each pair is the basis in each case for the word
for "rights" and relates to concepts of justice, fairness, rights, and obligation.
In English, this distinction no longer is maintained.
120
ously implied fulfilling of acts o f loyalty that sanctioned under

oath. But now one element of the pact appears which constitu
tively exceeds any service that could seek to satisfY its exigency,
thus introducing a dissymmetry and disconnect in the sphere of
the law. The promise exceeds any claim that could supposedly
ground itself in it, just as faith surpasses any obligation whatsoever of counterservice. Grace is that excess which, while it always
divides the two elements of prelaw and prevents them from coin
ciding, does not even allow them to completely break apart. The
charis issuing from this fracture between faith and obligation,
between religion and law [diritto] , cannot in turn be taken as a
substantial and separate sphere, for it can only maintain itself
through an antagonistic relation to faith and obligation. In other
words, charis can only maintain itself as the insistence of a mes
sianic exigency in the two, without which law [diritto] and reli
gion would, in the long run, be condemned to atrophy.
Hence the complex relation between the spheres of grace and
law in Paul, which never manage to reach a complete schism, but
which, on the contrary, permit seeing in faith the fulfillment of
the instance of the justice of the law (Rom. 8:4) and the law as a
"pedagogue" leading to the messianic (Gal. 3:24) , bearing the task
of showing the impossibility of the execution of the law in a
hyperbolic way (kath'hyperbolen), making sin appear as such
(Rom. 7:13) . Nevertheless in Paul the relation between grace and
sin, between gratuitousness and service is defined through a con
stitutive excess (perisseia) : "But not as the offense, so is the gift of
grace. For if through the offense of one, many be dead, much
more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man,
Jesus Christ, has abounded to many. . . . Moreover the law
entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound [hyperperisseusen] " (Rom. 5:I5-21) .
In one important passage, which perhaps has not been stressed
enough, grace seems to even define a real "sovereignty" (autarkeia)
of the messianic in relation to works of law: "God loves a cheerful
giver. And God is able to abound all grace in you, so that always
in everything having absolute sovereignty [en panti pantole pasan
autarkeian] , ye may abound with regard to every good work" (2
The Sixth Day
121
Cor. 9:7-8). What should be obvious is that autarkeia does not sig
nifY a sufficient disposition of goods (as SOIrle translations suggest) ,
but the sovereign capacity to gratuitously carry out good works
independently of the law. In Paul, there isn't any conflict between
powers properly speaking; what you have is a disconnection
between them, from which charis sovereignly emerges.
The juridical, or prejuridical, origin of the notion of faith and
the situating of faith in the 'caesura
between faith and obligation paves the The Two Covenants
way for a correct understanding of the
Pauline doctrine of the "new covenant" and of the two diathekai.
Mosaic law, the normative diatheke, is preceded by the promise
that was made to Abraham. This promise is hierarchically superi
or inasmuch as Mosaic law is powerless to render it inoperative
katargein (Gal. 3:1 7 : "the law, which came four hundred and thir
ty years later, cannot annul the covenant which was previously rat
ified by God, and thus make the promise inoperative") . The
Mosaic law of obligations and works, which is defined in 2
Corinthians 3:14 as "the old covenant" (palai diatheke), is instead
rendered inoperative by the Messiah. The kaine diatheke (kaine
means "new" in every sense, not just in the sense of nea, most
recent) , which Paul spoke of to the Corinthians (I Cor. II:2 5 :
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood"; and 2 Cor. 3:6:
"Who also hath made u s able ministers o f the new covenant; not
of the letter, but of the spirit") , represents the fulfillment of the
prophesy in Jerome 31:31 ("Behold, the days come, says the Lord,
that I will make a new covenant' with the house of Israel, and with
the house of Judah") , and goes back to the promise made to
Abraham from which it draws its legitimacy.
In Galatians 4:22-26, Paul traces out an allegorical genealogy of
two diathekai :
It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, the
other by a free woman. He who was born by the slave woman was born
according to the flesh; but the son born by the fee woman was through
the promise. These things are an allegory: for these women are the two
122
covenants; the one from mount Sinai, who bears children into bondage;
this is Hagar. For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds
to the present Jerusalem, which is in bondage with her children. But the
Jerusalem which is above is free, and she is our mother.
The two diathekai, both of which go back to Abraham, represent

two distinct genealogical lineages. Mosaic law comes from Hagar
and corresponds to the servitude of commandments and obliga
tions; the new covenant, which comes from Sarah, corresponds to
the liberty of the law:
eppagelia Abraham
Sarah
Hagar
(palaia diatheke)
(kaini diatheke)
the law of faith
katargein
the Mosaic law of the

commandments
The messianic instance, which takes place in historical time and

renders Mosaic law inoperative, goes back genealogically before
Mosaic law, toward the promise. The space that opens up between
the two diathekai is the space of grace. This is why the kaine
diathekai cannot be something like a written text containing new
and diverse precepts (which is how it ends up) . As stated in the
extraordinary passage right before the affirmation of the new
covenant, it is not a letter written in ink on tables of stone; rather,
it is written with the breath of God on hearts of the flesh. In other
words, it is not a text, but the very life of the messianic commu
nity, not a writing, but a form oflife : he epistole hemon hymeis este,
"You are our letter" (2 Cor. 3:2) !
'6
This aporetic situating of grace in the fracturing of faith and law
allows us to understand how, over the history of the Church, it gave way
to those conflicts that emerge strongly for the first time in the Pelagian
The Sixth Day
123
controversy, well documented by Augustine's De natura e gratia.

According to Pelagius, grace was given to human nature once and for all
through redemption. Human nature possesses it like an inamissibile,
irrevocable, good that could never be lost, so that it always already
exceeds the possibility and actuality of sin in the Christian. The Church
would, however, advocate the amissibile, perishable, quality of grace as
well as the necessity of further intervention so as to counter the loss of
grace through sin. This amounts to reintroducing an openly j uridical
theme with regard to grace, a kind of compromise between charis and
nomos. Through transgression and guilt, man constantly loses that grace
which once figured as the only counterservice of loyalty to the pact. In
a more general way, with the reintroduction of nomos into Christian the
ology, grace will end up occupying just as aporetic a place as does law in
Judaism. A Kafkaesque universe of grace is specifically present in
Christian dogma, just as a Kafkaesque universe of the law is present in
Judaism.
'6
At this point we should take a closer look at numerous analogies
and divergences between Pauline charis and the
system of prestations totales, or "total services," Gift and Grace
described by Mauss in his book The Gift: The
Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. We should also ques
tion Mauss's strange silence concerning our culture's sphere of gratu
itousness par excellence, the sphere of grace (in addition to using ethno
graphic material, Mauss also cites Greek and Roman texts and even
Islamic texts) . Mauss obviously conceives of the gift as preceding utili
tarian services, but the determining-and simultaneously, the most
aporetic-point of his doctrine is the absolute inextricability of gift and
obligation. Not only is the obligation of the donor essential to potlatch,
but the gift also furnishes the Iground for the recipient's unconditional
obligation to counterservice. In addition, as Mauss notes at the end of
his book, the theory of total services requires that notions one is used to
opposing (such as freedom/obligation; liberality/savings; generosity/in
terest; luxury/utility) become neutralized and hybridized. As is obvious
in his concluding remarks, which are, in the end, social-democratic and
progressivist, what is defined in The Gift is not a theory of gratuitous
ness, but a paradoxical bond between gratuitousness and obligation.
(Even those who nowadays look to the gift as a fundamental social par
adigm, substituting it with contract, do not have of anything other than
this in mind.)
124
As we have seen, even i n Paul, faith and grace are not simply disentan
gled from the sphere of the law; rather, they are placed within a complex
web of relations with respect to the law. Nevertheless, in a different way
than in Mauss, gratuitousness does not provide the grounds for obliga
tory service. Instead, it manifests itself as an irreducible excess with
regard to all obligatory service. Grace does not provide the foundation
for exchange and social obligations; it makes for their interruption. The
messianic gesture does not found, it fulfills.
Georges Bataille sought to develop this constitutive excess of grace in his
theory of the sovereignty of the unproductive expenditure (depense
improductive). (Odd that he fails to realize that the expression was
already present in Paul!) In this endeavor, however, he transforms gratu
itousness into a privileged category of acts (laughter, luxury, eroticism,
etc.) that stands in opposition to utilitarian acts. It is obvious that for
Paul grace cannot constitute a separate realm that is alongside that of
obligation and law. Rather, grace entails nothing more than the ability
to use the sphere of social determinations and services in its totality.
There are therefore no linguistic grounds for Buber's antithesis

between Jewish emunah and Pauline pistis. As
Faith Divided an expression of the condition that results from
"cutting a pact," these terms are substantially
equivalent with each other; no distinction can be made between
one as "having confidence" and the other as "recognizing as true. "
I n the additional postface t o the newer German edition o f Two
Ijtpes of Faith, Flusser nevertheless discerns another meaning in
Buber's distinction, understanding it as a split in faith within
Christianity itself: In Christianity, according to Flusser, two 'types
of faith cohabit each other but are so difficult to reconcile that they
make for a "tragic problem, which the Christians have only just
begun to recognize" (Buber, 241) . The first faith is that of Jesus, the
religion of the historical Jesus, the faith professed by him in words
and actions, and the second faith is the faith in Jesus Christ, a faith
that fully matured in the Christian community after the crucifix
ion and coincided with the construction of Christology and the
recognition of Jesus as the only-begotten son of God, who was
made man and died for the redemption of our sins.
Lessing was the first to clearly grasp this distinction in a frag
ment from I780 entitled "The Religion of Christ":
The Sixth Day
12 5
The religion of Christ and the Christian religion are two quite different
things. The former, the religion of Christ, is that religion which as man
he himself recognized and practiced . . . . The latter, the Christian reli
gion, is that religion which accepts it as true that he was more than a
man, and makes Christ himself: as such, the object of its worship. How
these two religions, the religion of Christ and the Christian religion, can
exist in Christ in one and the same person, is inconceivable . . . . The
former, the religion of Christ, is contained in the evangelists quite dif
ferently from the Christian religion. The religion of Christ is therein
contained in the dearest and most lucid language. On the other hand,
the Christian religion is so uncertain and ambiguous, that there is
scarcely a single passage which, in all the history of the world, has been
interpreted in the same way by two men. (Lessing, 334-35 )
The astuteness of Lessing's observation becomes all the more evi

dent if: following Flusser's suggestion, we use this perspective to
look, on the one hand, at the texts that comprise the New
Testament, the Gospels and the Acts, and on the other, at the
Letters of Paul, John, James, and so on. If only these latter texts
had been preserved, our knowledge of the life of Jesus would have
been far more fragmentary. (Paul hardly ever says anything con
cerning the historical Jesus.) And if only the first set had been pre
served, we would have a very limited knowledge of Christian the
ology and of the Christological drama. This means that our
knowledge of the faith of Jesus is limited to the Gospels, while the
faith in Christ, something like Huber's pistis, is uniquely derived
from the other texts.
In fusing Lessing's considerations with Huber's theory, Flusser
grasps an antinomy that undoubtedly aids our understanding of
the messianic problem and, even more so, the history of Christian
theology. All of the pseudoproblems of Jesus' "messianic con
science" in fact came about in order to cover up the hiatus opened
up between these two faiths. What did Jesus believe in? There is
something grotesque in this question, especially if formulated in
the following way: what could it mean for Jesus to believe in Jesus
Christ? There is no answer to this question in the Gospels, and
next to nothing is found in Mark 8:29-30, even if it is not inter
polated, as certain people claim, and for good reason. "Jesus asks
his disciples, 'Hut whom say you that I am?' And Peter answers,
126
'You are the Messiah [su ei ho christos] .' And he charged them that
they should tell no man of this." The same could be said for the
Christological controversy that agitated the Church in the third
century and culminated with Constantine's intervention in Nicea,
which was inspired by the counsel of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Constantine's ftiseur or personal hairdresser as Overbeck calls him.
The mediation that is developed here, and which culminates in
the Nicean formulation that many Catholics have repeated (pis
teuomen eis hena theon, "We believe in one God, the almighty
Father . . . and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, only-begotten son of the
Father") , is a more or less successful attempt to reconcile Buber's
two types of faith with Lessing's two religions.
But is this really the case in Paul? Could we also conceive of a
split in faith in Paul in similar terms? I do not think so. Paul's faith
starts with the resurrection, and he does not know Jesus in the
flesh, only Jesus Messiah. This separation is already clear-cut in the
greeting of the letter commented on at length. "Concerning his
Son, who was made from the seed of David according to the flesh,
he who was designated Son of God in power according to the spir
it of holiness, by resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:3-4) . And
in 2 Corinthians 5:16 we read, "If we could have [or, if we had]
known the Messiah in the flesh." Just as with the Jewish tradition
wherein something like a "life of the Messiah" cannot exist (the
Messiah-or, at least his name-was created before the creation of
the world) , the essential content of Pauline faith is not the life of
Jesus but Jesus Messiah, crucified and risen. But what does fa,ith in
Jesus Messiah mean? How, in this instance, is the split between
faith of Jesus and the faith in Jesus always and already overcome?
In answering these questions, we should start by using some lin
guistic data. In the Gospels the most coIIimon nar
Belief In rative formulas read: "Thus Jesus said to his disciples," "Jesus, ascending to Jerusalem," "Jesus entered
into the temple. " With the obvious exception of 1 Corinthians
rr:23, these kind of diagetic sentences never occur in Paul; rather,
he almost always uses his typical formula: kyrios Jesous christos, "the
Lord Jesus Messiah." In Acts 9:22, Luke shows the apostle in the
The Sixth Day
I27
YILCl.gQgue affirming hoti houtos estin ho christos, "that that one

[Jesus] is the Messiah." But this formula never occurs in the
Pauline text, with the one unique exception of Romans IO:9,
which we will turn to later. Instead, in his rendering of his flith,
Paul uses the expression pisteuein eis Iesoun christon, '.1:9 believe in
Jesus Messiah." This expression, which in the Latin translation
became the canonical expression of faith, is an f1omaly in Greek.
Pisteuo is normally constructed with the gative, or with the @:ccu
sative, or even with hoti plus a verb, in order to convey the con
tent of faith. The Pauline formula becomes all the more significant
as it never appears in the Synoptic Gospels, thus defining in a sub
stantive way his conception of faith. It is as if: for Paul, there is no
space between Jesus and Messiah for the 2pulative is ; I Corin
thians 2:2 is typical: "For I determined not to know anything
among you except Jesus Messiah." He does not know that Jesus is
the Messiah, he only knows Jesus Messiah. (This is how a misun
derstanding could emerge later on that allowed for the syntagma
Iesous christos to be taken as proper name.)
From the standpoint of linguistics, this phrase is actually a nomi
nal syntagma. The theory of the nominal
sentence constitutes one of the most Nominal Sentence
interesting chapters in linguistics. In
Greek, as in Latin--as well as in Hebrew and Arabic-we often
come across a proposition that is called a clause from a semantic
standpoint, inasmuch as it expresses a complete assertion but does
not contain a verbal predicate. There are two well-known exam
ples in Pindar: skias onar anthropos, "from a dream the shade the
man" (Pythian ode 8.95) . (In current translations we read, "man is
the dream of a shadow," and ariston hydor, which is "best the
water" [Olympian ode 1.I] , usually translated as "best is water" or
"water is the best of things.") But the work of contemporary lin
guists, especially that of Meillet and Benveniste, has shown us that
it is quite simply wrong to interpret a nominal sentence as having
an implied or present (zero degree) copula. The nominal sentence
and the sentence with an explicit copula do not only differ mor
phologically, but semantically as well. "The nominal sentence and
the sentence with esti do not make assertions in the same way and
128
do not belong on the same plane. The first is from discourse, the
second, from narration. The one establishes an absolute; the other
describes a situation" (Benveniste 1971, 142) . We should think
through the philosophical implications of Benveniste's distinction.
In Indo-European languages, we usually distinguish between two
fundamental meanings of the verb to be, the existential meaning
(the position of an existence, such as "the world is") and the pred
icative meaning (the predication of a quality or essence, "the world
is eternal") . The fundamental division in ontology, the ontology
of existence and the ontology of essence, stems from this double
meaning. (The relation between these two ontologies is the rela
tion of a presupposition: that all that is said is on the
hupokeimenon of existence; cf. Aristotle, Categories 2a3 5) . Yet the
nominal sentence escapes this distinction, presenting a third type
irreducible to the two other types: it is this one that requires
thought.
What then does it mean that in Paul faith is expressed in the
nominal syntagma "Jesus Messiah" and not the verbal syntagma
"Jesus is the Messiah" ? Paul does not believe that Jesus possesses
the quality of being the Messiah; he believes in "Jesus Messiah"
and that is all. Messiah is not a predicate tacked onto the subject
Jesus, but something that is inseparable from him, without, how
ever, constituting a proper name. For Paul, this is faith; it is an
experience of being beyond existence and essence, as much
beyond subject as beyond predicate. But isn't this precisely what
happens in love? Love does not allow for copulative predication,
it never has a quality or an essence as its object. "I love beautiful
brunette-tender Mary," not "I love Mary because she is beautiful,
brunette, tender," in the sense of her possessing such and such an
attribute. The moment when I realize that my beloved has such
and-such a quality, or such-and-such a defect, then I have irrevo
cably stepped out of love, even if, as is often the case, I continue
to believe that I love her, especially after having given good reason
for continuing to do so. Love has no reason, and this is why, in
Paul, it is tightly interwoven with faith. This is why, as we read in
the hymn in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, "Love is magnanimous; it acts
The Sixth Day
129
kindly. Love does not envy; love does not boast; it does not
become haughty. It does not behave improperly; it does not seek
its own; it is not provoked; it does not keep a record of evil. It
does not rejoice over injustice, but it rejoices with the truth. It
covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. "
But what then i s the world of faith? Not a world o f substance
and qualities, not a world in which the grass is green, the sun is
warm, and the snow is white. No, it is not a world of predicates,
of existences and of essences, but a world of indivisible events, in
which I do not judge, nor do I believe that the snow is white and
the sun is warm, but I am transported and displaced in the snow's
being-white and in the sun's-being-warm. In the end, it is a world
in which I do not believe that Jesus, such-and-such a man, is the
Messiah, only-begotten son of God, begotten and not created,
cosubstantial in the Father. I only believe in Jesus Messiah; I am
carried away and enraptured in him, in such a way that "I do not
live, but the Messiah lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).
For Paul, this experience is above all an experience of the word,
and this should be our starting point.
The two dense nominal syntagmas in
The Word of Faith
Romans 10:1 7 categorically affirm "The
faith from hearing, the hearing through the word of the Messiah."
From the perspective of faith, to hear a word does not entail assert
ing the truth of any semantic content, nor does it simply entail
renouncing understanding, as is implicit in the Pauline critique of
glossolalia in I Corinthians 14. What then is the right relation to
the word of faith? How does faith speak and what does hearing its
word entail?
Paul defines the experience of the word of faith (to rema tes pis
teos) in an important passage. Let us read this passage (Rom.
10:6-10) carefully.
But the j ust of faith says this: Do not say in your heart, "Who will go
up into Heaven?" that is, to bring down the Messiah; or, "Who will go
down into the abyss?" that is, to bring the Messiah up from the dead.
130
But what does i t say? "The word is near you, i n your mouth and in
your heart," this is the word of faith [to rema tes pisteos] which we pro
claim. Because if you confess [homologein, literally, "to say the same
thing"] Lord Jesus with your mouth, and believe in your heart that God
raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one
believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto
salvation.
Paul is both paraphrasing and emending Deuteronomy 30:Il-I4,

concerning the law God gives to the Jews:
For this command which I am commanding you today is not too high
above you, nor is it too far ofE It is not in the heavens that you should
say, Who shall go up into the heavens for us, and bring it to us, and
cause us to hear it, that we may do it? And it is not beyond the sea that
you should say, Who shall cross over for us to the region beyond the sea
and take it for us, and cause us to hear it, that we may do it? For the
word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, and in your
hands that you may do it.
Having just aHirmed that the Messiah is the telos of the law,
Paul, in a typical gesture of hermeneutic violence, transfers onto
faith and the Messiah what in Deuteronomy referred to Mosaic
law. He substitutes the sea for the abyss, the sheol in which the
Messiah descended, and takes out "and in your hands that you
may do it," which referred to works of law and was actually an
addition to the Septuagint. The word nearby, which was a word of
command, now becomes a "word of faith. " This is what Paul
attempts to define in adding on verses 9 and 10. "If you onfess
Lord Jesus with your mouth . . . . " The word homologein, which
Jerome translates as confiteri and which from that point on became
the technical term for the profession of faith, signifies saying the
same thing, making one word agree with another (hence, contrac
tual agreement) , or making it agree with a given reality (for exam
ple, in the correspondence between logoi and erga, "words" and
"works") . But in Paul, the correspondence is not between different
words, or between words and deeds; rather, this correspondence is
internal to the word itself, between mouth and heart. In this light,
eggys, "near," is a particularly interesting word. Not only does it
The Sixth Day
131
signifY nearness in space, but, above all, temporal proximity

(hence, for example, Rom 13:n) . The correspondence between
mouth and heart in the word of faith is that of a nearing and
almost coinciding in time. On the other hand, eggys etymologi
cally derives from a root that indicates the openness or emptiness
of the hand, and thus the act of giving or putting something in the
hand. In this fashion eggyes signifies the token put in one's hand,
and the Greek ear would undoubtedly hear the resonance between
the two terms, especially since in Hebrews 7:22 eggyos is Jesus, "the
guarantor of a better covenant." The nearness is also a token and
a guarantee of efficacy. The experience of the word of faith thus
does not entail the experience of a denotative character of a word,
its referring to things, but an experience of the word's being near,
held in the harmony between mouth and heart, and, by means of
this homologein, the word becomes the deliverer of salvation. The
fact that Paul, for the first and only time, constructs pisteuein with
hoti does not contradict this self-referential quality of the word of
faith. As he clarifies immediately after, it is a matter of a purely
logical articulation of the salvational efficacy of the word via two
moments. The belief in the heart is neither a holding true, nor the
description of an interior state, but a justification; only the pro
fessing of the mouth accomplishes salvation. Neither a glossolalia
deprived of meaning, nor mere denotative word, the word of faith
enacts its meaning through its utterance. When thinking of the
nearness of the mouth and heart, we have to venture something
like a performative efficacy of the word of faith realized in its very
pronouncement.
Ever since John L. Austin defined the category of the performative
in How to Do Things with Words, it took on
Performative
increasing popularity not only with linguists,
but with philosophers and jurists as well. The
performative is a linguistic enunciation that does not describe a
state of things, but immediately produces a real fact. The paradox
(which analytic philosophy summarized in the formula speech act)
is that the meaning of an enunciation (expressed in syntagmas
such as "I swear," "I declare," or "I promise") coincides with a real-
132
ity that is itself produced through its utterance (this is why the
performative can never be either true or false) . In commenting on
Austin's theses, Benveniste took care to distinguish what he took
to be the performative, in the true sense of the term, from other
linguistic categories with which the philosopher had muddied it
(such as the imperative "Open the dood" or the sign "Dog" on a
fence) . He recognized that the speech can only function in cir
cumstances, which, while authorizing it as an act, guarantee its
effectiveness. ''Anyone can shout in the public square, 'I decree a
general mobilization, ' and as it cannot be an act because the req
uisite authority is lacking, such an utterance is no more than
words; it reduces itself to futile clamor, childishness, or lunacy"
(Benveniste 1971, 236) .
In this manner, what the great linguist brought to light was the
closely knit link between the sphere of the performative and the
sphere of the law [diritto] (which was affirmed in the close ety
mological tie between ius and iurare) . The law [diritto] could be
defined as the realm in which all language tends to assume a per
formative value. To do things with words could even be consid
ered as a residue in language of a magical-juridical state of human
existence, in which words and deeds, linguistic expression and real
efficacy, coincide.
But how does the performative enact its end? What allows a cer
tain syntagma to acquire, by means of its mere pronouncement,
the efficacy of the deed, disproving the ancient maxim that words
and deeds are separated by an abyss? Linguists make no mention
of it, as though they come up against one final magical stratum of
language, almost as though they truly believed in it. What is obvi
ously most important here is the self-referential quality in each
speech act. Yet this self-referentiality is not exhausted in the fact
that the performative, as Benveniste notes, takes itself as its own
referent inasmuch as it refers to a reality that it itself produces.
Rather, what should be highlighted is that the self-referentiality of
the performative is always constituted through a suspension of the
normal denotative function of language. The performative verb is
actually constructed with a dictum that, taken on its own, is of a
purely constative nature, without which it would remain empty
The Sixth Day
133
and inefficient. (I swear and I declare only are of value if they are
followed or preceded by a dictum that complements them.) It is
this constative quality of the dictum that is suspended and put into
question at the very moment that it becomes the object of a per
formative syntagma. This is how the constatives "Yesterday I was
in Rome" or "The population is mobilized" stop being constatives
if they are respectively preceded by the performative "I swear" or
"I declare. " The performative thus substitutes normal denotative
relations between words and deeds with a self-referential relation
that, in ousting the first, posits itself as decisive fact. What is essential here is not a relation of truth between words and things, but
rather, the pure form of the relation between language and world,
now generating linkages and real effects. Just as, in the state of
exception, law suspends its own application in order to ground its
enforcement in a normal case, so too in the performative does lan
guage suspend its own denotation only in order to establish links
with things. The ancient formula of the twelve tables that expresses the performative power of law [diritto] (uti lingua nuncupassit,
ita ius esto, "as the tongue has uttered, thus be the law") does not
mean that what is said is factually true, only that the dictum is
itself a factum, and as such, obliges those among whom it was
uttered.
This means that the performative bears witness to a phase in
human culture in which-contrary to what we are used to think
ing-language does not merely refer to things on the basis of a
constative or truth relation, but through a very particular kind of
operation, in which the word swears on itself, it itself becomes the
fundalnental fact. One could even say that what is produced by
breaking the originary magical-performative relation between
word and things is precisely the denotative relation between lan
guage and word.
How then should we understand Pauline homologein with
regard to this performative sphere whose prejuridical paradigm is
oath? In the last years of his life, Michel Foucault was working on
a book on confession. Traces remain in a 1981 seminar given at the
Catholic University of Leuven. Foucault places confession in the
sphere of what he calls "forms of truth-telling [veridiction] ," which
'1filI
134
insists less (or not only) upon the assertional content o f confes
sion, than upon the act itself of uttering truth. This act constitutes
something like a performative, since, through confession, the sub
ject is bound to the truth itself and changes his relation to others
in addition to himself: 1 In the seminar at Leuven, Foucault begins
by opposing confession and oath, which, in the ancient world rep
resented the archaic form of the trial and-before moving onto his
analysis of confession in the modern trial-he looks at the prac
tice of Christian exomologesis, the penitential confession of sins,
which was formalized over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
But between these two forms of veridiction or truth-telling
between the sacramental performative and the penitential perfor
mative-lies another that Foucault does not touch upon. This
very form is the confession of faith documented in the Pauline
passage on which we have been commenting. Between the perfor
mative of the oath and of penance, the performativum fidei defines
the originary messianic-that is, Christian-experience of the
word.
What is the relation between the performativum fidei and the
penitential and sacramental performaPerformativum fidei
tive? As is the case with every linguistic
act, so too with Paul does the word of
faith rise forth to go beyond the denotative relation between lan
guage and the world, toward a different and more originary status
of the word. In the same way, for Paul, homologia does not consist
in a relation between words and things, but in language it?elf in
the nearness between mouth and heart. Each revelation is always
and above all a revelation of language itself: an experience of a
pure event of the word that exceeds every signification and is, nev
ertheless, animated by two opposing tensions. The first, which
Paul calls nomos, attempts to encapsulate the excess by articulating
it in precepts and in semantic contents. The second, which coin1. Translator's note. Agarnben is referring to unpublished lectures entitled
"Mal faire, dire vrai," given in 1981 in Leuven. Additional traces of these lec
tures can be found in "The Hermeneutics of the Self' in Foucault 1999, and
in Foucault 1993.
The Sixth Day
135
cides with pistis, is oriented, on the contrary, toward maintaining

it open beyond any determinate signification. It follows that there
are two ways to go beyond the denotative function of language
toward the experience of its event. The first, according to the oath
paradigm, attempts to use it as a means to ground contract and
obligation. For the other, however, the experience of the pure
word opens up the space for gratuitousness and use. The latter is
an expression of the subject's freedorn ("our freedom which we
have in the Messiah"; Gal. 2:3) ; the former is the expression of his
subjection to a codified system of norms and articles of faith.
(Already at the beginning of the fourth century, one finds a shift
in conciliar symbols from the act of homologein and the experience
of the nearness of the word of faith to the assertive dogmatic con
tent of the confession.) As the history of the Church clearly
demonstrates-as does that of societas humana in its entirety-the
dialectic between these two experiences of the word is essential. If,
as it inevitably happens and seems to be happening again today,
the second falls to the wayside leaving only the word of nomos in
absolute force, and if the performativum fidei is completely covered
by the performativum sacramenti, then the law itself stiffens and
atrophies and relations between men lose all sense of grace and
vitality. The juridicizing of all human relations in their entirety,
the confusion between what we may believe, hope, and love, and
what we are supposed to do and not supposed to do, what we are
supposed to know and not know, not only signal the crisis of reli
gion but also, and above all, the crisis of law. The messianic is the
instance, in religion and equally in law, of an exigency of fulfill
ment which-in putting origin and end in a tension with each
other-restores the two halves of prelaw in unison. At this same
moment, it shows the impossibility of their ever coinciding. (This
is why the actual opposition between secular States, founded
uniquely on law, and fundamentalist States, founded uniquely on
religion, is only a seeming opposition that hides a similar political
decline.) But in this, it points, beyond prelaw, toward an experi
ence of the word, which-without tying itself denotatively to
things, or taking itself as a thing, without being infinitely sus-

pended i n its openness o r fastening itself up in dogma-manifests
itself as a pure and common potentiality of saying, open to a free
and gratuitous use of time and the world.
C.!) The interpretation of the "word of faith" in Romans IO:9-IO in
terms of a potentiality that exists as
The Nearness of the Word potentiality is already found in Origen.

In De anima (417a2 1 ff.) , Aristotle dis
tinguishes between two figures of potentiality. The first is the generic
one, according to which one says of a child that he can become a gram
marian, craftsman, or pilot. The second is the effective potential (or
potential according to exis) , which belongs to the one who already
enacts them. In the first, the passage to the act implies an exhaustion
and destruction of potential. In the second, however, we find a conser
vation (soteria) of potential in the act and something like a giving of
potentiality to itself (epidosis eis heauto) . In applying the Aristotelian dis
tinction to the Pauline text, Origen sets up the opposition between the
merely virtual nearness of God's word to every man and to the meaning
that actually exists (efficacia vel efficentia) in the one who confesses the
word of faith in his mouth. "In this way, as well, then one must believe
that Christ, who is the Word of God, is indeed potentially near us, i.e.,
near every human being, j ust as language is to children; but it will be
said that he is in me in actuality when I shall have confessed with my
mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in my heart that God raised him
from the dead" (Origen 2002, 138-39) .
The word of faith manifests itself as the effective experience of a pure
power [potenza] of saying that, as such, does not coincide with any
denotative proposition, or with the perfo'rmative value of a speech act.
Rather, it exists as an absolute nearness of the word. One therefore
understands why, for Paul, messianic power finds its telos in weakness.
The act itself of a pure potentiality of saying, a word that always remains
close to itself, cannot be a signifying word that utters true opinions on
the state of things, or a j uridical performative that posits itself as fact.
There is no such thing as a content of faith, and to profess the word of
faith does not mean formulating true propositions on God and the
world. To believe in Jesus Messiah does not mean believing something
about him, legein ti kata tinos, and the attempt of the Councils to for
mulate the content of faith in symbola can only be taken as a sublime
irony. "Messianic and weak" is therefore that potentiality of saying,
The Sixth Day
137
which, in dwelling near the word not only exceeds all that is said, but
also exceeds the act of saying itself: the performative power of language.
This is the remnant of potentiality that is not consumed in the act, but
is conserved in it each time and dwells there. If this remnant of poten
tiality is thus weak, if it cannot be accumulated in any form of knowl
edge or dogma, and if it cannot impose itself as a law, it does not follow
that it is passive or inert. To the contrary, it acts in its own weakness,
rendering the word of law inoperative, in de-creating and dismantling
the states of fact or of law, making them freely available for use.
Katargein and chresthai are the act of a potentiality that fulfills itself in
weakness. That this potentiality finds its telos in weakness means that it
does not simply remain suspended in infinite deferral; rather, turning
back toward itself, it fulfills and deactivates the very excess of significa
tion over every signified, it extinguishes languages (I Cor. 13 :8). In this
way, it bears witness to what, unexpressed and insignificant, remains in
use forever near the word.
You may recall the image of the hunchback dwarf in Benjamin's

first thesis on the philosophy of history--:a. dwarf is hiding
pneath a chessboard and, through his movements, assures vict:()::
ry to the mechanical puppet dressed in the garb of a Turk.
Benjamin borrows this image from Poe; however, in transposing
this image onto the ;in of the philosophy of history, he adds
that the dwarf is in fact: theology, who "today, as we know is wiz

ened and has to keep out of sight," and if historical materialism
.
knew how to put theology to use, it would win this historical battle, thus defeating its fearful adversary.
Benjalnin invites us to conceive the very text of the philosophy
of history as a chessboard upon which a crucial theoretical battle
unfolds, and which, we are to assume, is even lent a hand by a hid
den theologian concealed between the lines of the text. Who is
this hunchback theologian, so well hidden by the author in his
theses that not a single person yet has identified him? Is it possi
ble to fi n d clues and traces in the text that would allow us to name
what should never be seen?
In one of the comments on section N of his index cards (which
contains notes on a theory of consciousness) ,
Citation Benjamin writes, "this work should fully develop the
art of citing without citation marks" (Benjamin
1974-89, 5: 57 2) . As you know, citation serves a strategic function
139
in Benjamin's work. Just as through citation a secret meeting takes

place between past generations and ours, so too between the writ
ing of the past and the present a similar kind of meeting tran
..l2i; .<::i.!(lt!()flS function as go-betweens in this encounter. It is
therefore not surprising that they must be discrete and know how
to perform their work !Ilcognito. This work consists not so much
in conserving, but in destroying something. In his essay on Kraus
we read, " [Citation] summons the word by its name, wrenches it
destructively from its context, but precisely thereby calls it back to
its origin"; at the same time it "saves and punishes" (Benjamin
1999b, 454) . In the essay "What is Epic Theatre?" Benjamin writes,
"to quote involves the interruption of its context" (Benjamin 1968,
151) . Brechtian epic theater, to which Benjamin refers in this text,
proposes to ensure that gesture be citable. ''An actor," he writes,
"must be able to space his gestures the way a typesetter produces
spaced type" (Benjamin 1968, 151) .
The German word translated as "spacing" is sperren. It refers to
the method in typography, not exclusive to German, of substitut
ing italics with a script that places a space between each letter of
that word that is highlighted. Benjamin himself uses this method
each time he uses a typewriter. From a palaeographic standpoint,
this convention is the opposite of how scribes used abbreviations
for reoccurring words in manuscripts that did not need to be read
in their entirety (or, as is the case with Ludwig Traube's nomina
sacra, for words that should not be read) . These spaced words are,
in a certain way, hyperread: they are read twice, and, as Benjamin
suggests, this double reading may be the palimpsest of citation.
If we now turn to the Handexemplar of the Theses, you will see
that Benjamin uses this typographical convention in second the
sis. In the fourth line from the end, we read, Dann ist uns wie
jedem Geschlecht, das vor uns war, eine s c h w a c h e messianische

Kraft mitgegeben, "Like every generation that preceded us, we have
been endowed with a w e a k lTlessianic power. " Why is weak
spaced this way? Which time of citability is at stake here? And why
is messianic power, to which Benjamin confides the redemption of
the past, weak?
According to my knowledge, only one text explicitly theorizes
I4
Walter Benjamin, Handexemplar of the Theses on the Philosophy ofHistOlY, sec

ond thesis.
on the weakness of messianic power. As you may have guessed, the

text is 2 Corinthians 12:9-IO, which we have commented on at
length, wherein Paul, having asked the Messiah to free him from
that thorn . in his flesh, hears the answer, he gar dynamis en
astheneia teleitai, "power fulfills itself in weakness. " "Therefore,"
the apostle adds, "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in
necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for the sake of the
Messiah: for when I am weak, then I am strong [dynatosJ ." The
fact that this is an actual citation without citation marks is con
firmed by Luther's translation, which Benjamin most likely- had
before his eyes. What Jerome translates as virtus in infirmitate per-
ficitur, Luther translates, like the majority of modern translators,
as denn mein Kraft ist in den schwachen Mechtig. Both of the terms
(Kraft and schwache, power and weakness) are present, and it is
precisely this hyperlegibility, this secret presence of the Pauline
text in the Theses, that is signaled discretely by this spacing.
You can imagine that I was moved (to quite a degree) when dis
covering this hidden (although not so hidden) Pauline citation in
the text within the Theses. To my knowledge, Taubes was the only
scholar to note the possible influence of Paul on Benjamin, but his
hypothesis referred to a text from the I920S, the Theological-
141
Political Fragment, which he connected to Romans 8 :19-23 .

Taubes's intuition is certainly on the mark; nevertheless, in that
particular instance it is not only impossible to speak of citations
(except perhaps in the case of Benjamin's term Vergdngnis, "caduci
ty," which could correspond to the Lutheran translation of verse
21, vergengliches Wesen), but there are also substantial differences
between the two texts. While, for Paul, creation is unwillingly sub
jected to caducity and destruction and for this reason groans and
suffers while awaiting redemption, for Benjamin, who reverses this
in an ingenious way, nature is messianic precisely because of its
eternal and complete caducity, and the rhythm of this messianic
caducity is happiness itself.
Once the Pauline citation in the second thesis is uncovered-(l
should remind you that the Theses on the Philosophy of
History are one of Benjamin's last works and are a kind Image
of testamentary compendium of his messianic conception of history)-the way is open to identify the hunchback the
ologian who secretly guides the hands of the puppet of historical
materialism. One of the most enigmatic concepts in Benjamin's
later thought is that of Bild, image. It appears several times in the
text of the Theses, most markedly in the fifth thesis, where we read:
"The true image [das wahre BildJ of the past flees by. The past can
be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it
can be recognized and is never seen again. . . . For every image of
the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own
concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably" (Benjamin 1968,
255) . Several fragments in which Benjarrlin seeks to define this true
terminus technicus of his conception of history are left, yet none is
as clear as MS 474: "It is not that what is past casts its light on
what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather,
image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with
the now to form a constellation. For while the relation of the pres
ent to the past is purely temporal (continuous) , the relation of
what-has-been to the now is dialectical, in leaps and bounds"
(Benjamin 1999a, 463) . 1
1 . In German, Benjamin 1974-89,
I:
1242
ff.
142
Bild thus encompasses, for Benjamin, all things (meaning all

objects, works of art, texts, records, or documents) wherein an
instant of the past and an instant of the present are united in a
constellation where the present is able to recognize the meaning of
the past and the past therein finds its meaning and fulfillment. We
already found a similar constellation in Paul between past and
future in terms of what we called a "typological relation." Even in
this instance, a moment from the past (Adam, the passage through
the Red Sea, the manna, etc.) must be recognized as the typos of
the messianic now, and furthermore, as we have seen, messianic
kairos is the relation itself. But why then does Benjamin speak of
Bild, or image, and not of type or figure (the term used by the
Vulgate) ? Well, in this case, we have one more textual confirma
tion that permits our referring to an actual citation without cita
tion marks. Luther translates Romans 5 :14 (typos tou mellontos, "the
type of the coming man") as welcher ist ein Bilde des der zukunffiig
war, "he who is an image of the one who was to come" (I Cor. 10:6
is rendered as Furbilde, and in Heb. 9:24 antitypos is rendered as
Gegenbilde). Benjamin also spaces out words in this text, but he
only does so three words after Bild for a word that seems to have
no need to be highlighted. The passage states: das wahre Bild der
Vergangenheit h u s c h t vorbei ("the true image of the past f I e e s
by"), which may also be an allusion to I Corinthians 7 :31 (paragei
gar to schema tou kosmou toutou, "for passing away is the figure of
this world") , from which Benjamin may have taken the idea that
the image of the past runs the risk of disappearing completely if
the present fails to recognize itself in it.
You will undoubtedly recall that in the Pauline letters, the con
cepts of typos and anakephalaiosis, recapitulation, are tightly inter
twined, together defining messianic time. The first is also present in
Benjamin's text in a particularly significant place, right at the end of
the last thesis (which, after the discovery of the Handexemplar, is
not the eighteenth, but the nineteenth thesis) . Let us turn to the
passage concerned: "Die Jetztzeit, die als Modell der Messianichen
in einer ungeheuren Abbreviatur die Geschichte der ganzen
Menschheit zusammenfasst, fallt haarscharf mit d e r Figur zusam
men, die Geschichte der Menschheit im Universum macht (Benja-
143
min 1974-89, 703) [Actuality, which, as a model of messianic time,

comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridge
ment, coincides exactly with t h a t figure which the history of
mankind has in the universe (my translation)] ."
Concerning the term Jetztzeit. in one of the manuscripts of the the
ses-the only manuscript in the technical sense of the
term, owned by Hannah Arendt-as soon as the word Jetztzeit
is written for the first time in the fourteenth thesis, it
appears in quotation marks. (Benjamin was writing by hand, so it
was impossible for him to space the letters out, sperren.) This gave
his first Italian translator, Renato Solrni, reason to translate the
word as "now-time" [tempo-ora] , which, although it is an arbitrary
choice (since the German word simply means actuality) , neverthe
less embodies something of Benjamin's intention. After all we have
said in this seminar about ho nyn kairos as a technical designation
of messianic time in Paul, we must not overlook the literal correla
tion between the two terms ("the of-now-time") . All the more so,
since recently in German the term harbors purely negative and
anti-messianic connotations. Thus, from Schopenhauer ("This one
here-our time-calls itselfby a name that it bestowed upon itsel
a name that is as characteristic as it is euphemistic: Jetzt-Zeit. Yes,
precisely Jetztzeit, meaning, only the now is thought and the time
that comes and judges is not even glanced at"; Schopenhauer,
213-14), to Heidegger ("What we call now-time Uetzt-Zei is
everyday time as it appears in the clock that counts the 'nows' . . . .
When [these Jetzt-Zeit] are covered up, the ecstatic and horizonal
constitution of temporality is levelled off "; Heidegger 1962, 474).
Benjamin dispels this negative connotation and endows the term
with the same qualities as those pertaining to the ho nyn kairos in
Paul's paradigm of messianic time.
Let us go back to the problem of recapitulation. The last sen
tence of the thesis-messianic time as an enormous abridgment of
the entire history-seems to clearly reiterate Ephesians 1:10 ("all
things are recapitulated in the Messiah") . But even in this instance,
if we look at Luther's translation, we immediately can tell that this
reiteration is actually a citation without quotation marks: aIle ding
zusamen verfasset wiirde in Christo. Each time, the verb (zusam-
I44
menfassen) corresponds to Pauline anakephalaiosasthai.

This should be enough to prove a textual correspondence, and
not mere conceptual correspondence, between the theses and the
letters. In this light, the entire vocabulary of the theses appears to
be truly stamped Pauline. It will not come as a surprise then that
the term redemption (Erlosung)-an absolutely critical concept in
Benjamin's notion of historical knowledge-is the term that
Luther uses to convey Pauline apolytrosis, just as crucial to the
Letters. Whether this Pauline notion is Hellenistic in its origin
(from the divine deliverance of the slaves, according to
Deissmann) , or strictly juridical, or the two together (which is
most likely) , in any case this orientation toward the past charac
teristic of Benjamin's messianism finds its canonic moment in
Paul.
But there is another clue, an external clue, which allows us to
infer that Scholem himself knew of this closeness between
Benjamin's thought and Paul's. Scholem's attitude toward Paul, an
author he knew well and once characterized as "the most out
standing example known to us of a revolutionary Jewish mystic"
(Scholem I96 5 , I4), is certainly not lacking in ambiguity. Yet the
discovery of a Pauline inspiration in aspects of his friend's mes
sianic thought must have bothered him, although he certainly
never would have raised the issue himself Nevertheless, in one of
his books-just as cautiously as when, in a book on Sabbatai Sevi,
he establishes a relation between Paul and Nathan of Gaza-he
seems to actually suggest, albeit in a cryptic fashion" that
Benjamin may have identified with Paul. This occurs in his inter
pretation of Agesilaus Santander, the enigmatic fragment written
by Benjamin in Ibiza in August I933. Scholem's interpretation is
based on the hypothesis that the name Agesilaus Santander, in
which Benjamin seems to refer to himself: is actually an anagram
for der Angelus Satanas (the angel Satan) . If, as I believe to be the
case, you keep in mind this aggelos satana who appears as a "thorn
in the flesh" in 2 Corinthians I2:7, it is not so surprising that
Scholem points to this very passage in Paul as Benjamin's possible
source. The allusion is a fleeting one and never occurs again, yet if
you take into account the fact that both Benjamin's text and the
14 5
Pauline passage are markedly autobiographic, this would imply

that by mentioning his friend's evocation of his secret relation to
the angel, Scholem is implying an identification with Paul on the
part of Benjamin.
Whatever the case may be, there is no reason to doubt that these
two fundamental messianic texts of our tradition, separated by
almost two thousand years, both written in a situation of radical
crisis, form a constellation whose time of legibility has finally
come today, for reasons that invite further reflection. Das Jetzt der
Lesbarkeit, "the now of legibility" (or of "knowability, "
Erkennbarkeit) defines a genuinely Benjaminian hermeneutic
principle, the absolute opposite of the current principle according
to which each work may become the object of infinite interpreta
tion at any given moment (doubly infinite, in the sense that inter
pretations are never exhaustive and function independently of any
historical-temporal situation) . Benjamin's principle instead pro
poses that every work, every text, contains a historical index which
indicates both its belonging to a determinate epoch, as well as its
only coming forth to full legibility at a determinate historical
moment. As Benjamin wrote in a note, in which he confided his
most extreme messianic formulation and which will aptly con
clude our seminar,
Each now is the now of a particular knowability Uedes Jetzt ist das Jetzt
einer bestimmten Erkennbarkeit) . In it, truth is charged to the bursting
point with time. (This point of explosion, and nothing else, is the death
of the intentio, which thus coincides with the birth of authentic histor
ical time, the time of truth.) It is not that what is past casts its light on
what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image
is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to
form a constellation. In other words: image is dialectics at a standstill.
For while the relation of the present to the past is purely temporal, the
relation of what has been to the now is dialectical: not temporal in
nature but imagistic [ bildlich] . Only dialectical images are genuinely his
torical-that is, not archaic-images. The image that is read-which is
to say, the image in the now of its recognizability-bears to the highest
degree the imprint of the perilous critical moment on which all reading
is founded. (Benjamin 1999a, 463)
Appendix: Interlinear Translation

of Pauline Texts
From the Letter to the Romans:

I: I - 7
I ntXUAO DOUAO XptcrTOU
Paul
slave
'llJcrou, XA1)TO
of [the] Messiah Jesus
called
Se:OU,
&.re6crToAo, &.cpwPtcr[.Levo d dJtXyyeAtGV
unto [the] announcement of God,
separated
emissary
0
which
repoe:re1)yydAtXTO DtcX. TWV repocp1)TwV w.hou ev yPtXCPtXl: &.yLtXt

[he] promised beforehand through the prophets
of him in holy writings
3 ree:pt
TOU utou tXUTOU TOU

ye:VO[.LEVOU ex crreep[.LtXTO
concerning the son of him the [one] having come from [the] seed
crapxtX,
L\tXutD XtXTcX.
of David according to [the] flesh,
TOU 6ptcrSeVTO utou Se:OU ev

son of God in
marked out as
Duva[.Le:t XtXTcX.
reve:u[.LtX &.ytwcrUV1) e &.VtXcrTacre:w
power
according to [the] spirit of holiness
by [the] resurrection
ve:Xpwv , ' l1)crou XptcrTOU TOU xupLou [.Lwv ,
of us,
of [the] dead, ofjesus Messiah
the Lord
Dt'
through
06 EAO:O[.Le:V XaptV XtXt &.reocrToAv d uretXxov

whom we received grace and [the] mandate unto obedience
re ticr tV TOI: eSve:crtv ureEp TOU OV6[.LtXTO
reLcrTe:w ev
for
the name
of [the] faith among all
the people
tXUTOU,
of him,
ol ecrTe: XtXL u[.Le:1 XA1)TOL 'l1)crou XptcrTOU,

called
by Jesus Messiah,
among whom are also you
6 ev
147
APPENDIX
7
"t'0'I
those being
to all
,
E:V ' P wfLYl &ylX7t'l)"t'o'I .9E:OU, XA'l)"t'O'I
in Rome beloved
of God, called
ay[Ot.c; . xapr.. c; ufL'Iv XlXt dpv'l) CX7tO .9E:OU 7t1X"t'pOC; fLWV

from God [the] father of us
saints;
grace to you and peace
XlXt xup[ou 'I'l)crou Xpt.cr"t'ou.
and [the] Lord Jesus Messiah.
1 : 14 -17
14 t'EAA'l)cr[V
"t'E: XlXt lXpapot.,

crocpo'I "t'E: XlXt
To [the] Greeks - and to [the] barbarians, to [the] wise - and
cXvo"t'Or.. OCPE:t.AE"t''l)
15 OU"t'w "t'O XIX"t"
to [the] unwise [a] debtor
thus
the part
'
P
XlXt ufL'IV "t'0'I EV wfLYl E:UIXYYE:A[crlXcr.9IXt..
16
also to you those in Rome to announce the good news.
E:fLE: 7tp6.9ufLov
of me desire
ou yap
For not
E7tIXr.. crxuVOfLlXt. "t'O E:UlXyyEAt.OV OUVlXfLt. yap .9E:OU Ecrnv

am I ashamed of the announcement; for [the] power of God is
d crW"t''l)p[IXV 7tIXV"t't "t'0 7tt.cr"t'E:uovn, 'IouolX[cp "t'E: 7tpw"t'ov
unto salvation
for every - believer,
to [the] Jew - first
XlXt t'EAA'l)Vr.. . 17 Ot.XlXt.OcrUV'l) yap .9E:OU EV lXu"t'0
and to [the] Greek. For [the] justice
of God in him
cX7tOXIXAU7t"t'E:"t'IXt. EX 7t[cr"t'E:W d 7t[crn v, XIX.9W yEYPIX7t"t'IXV
is revealed
from faith
to faith,
as
[it] is written:
6 OE: O[XlXt.O EX 7t[cr"t'E:W crE:"t'IXt..
the -
just
by faith
will live.
2 :9 -16
9 .9A'I Y;t.
XlXt cr"t'E:VOXWp[1X E7tt 7tacrlXv y;uXv &v.9pW7tOU

Tribulation and distress
to every
soul
of man
"t'OU XIX"t'E:PYIXOfLEVOU "t'O xlXx6v , ' IouolX[ou "t'E: 7tpw"t'OV XlXt

who puts to work
evil,
and
t'EAA'l)VO ' 10 o61X OE: XlXt "t't.fL XlXt dpv'l) 7tIXV"t't "t'0
to [the] Greek:
glory
and honor and peace
to each one
EPYIXofLEVCP "t'O &YIX.96v, 'IouolX[cp "t'E: 7tpw"t'ov XlXt t'EAA'l)Vr.. .
working
the good,
and to [the] Greek.
II OU yap Ecrnv 7tpocrW7tOA'l)fLY;tlX 7tlXpa
For not
"t'0 .9E:0.
is [there] [a] preference of faces according to - God.
12 "Ocrot. yap IXvOfLW
fLIXP"t'OV , &v6fLw XlXt &7tOAOUV"t'IXt.

For as many as without law sinned,
lawless also will perish;
APPENDIX
149
xcxl ocrO[.
EV v6(J.<J> (J.cx.p't'ov , Dr.. a v6(J.ou xpdtcrov't'cx.(. '
and as many as in [the] law sinned,
through [the] law will be judged:
I3 ou yap
ol axpocx.'t'cx.t. v6(J.ou DLxcx.r.. o r.. 1tcx.pa ['t'iliJ &Eili,

God,
For not [are] the hearers
of [the] law just
in
aAA' ol 1t0l.. 1) 't'cx.t. v6(J.ou Dr..X cx.r.. W &crov't'cx.r.. .

but the makers
of [the] law will be justified.
I4 o't'cx.v yap
For whenever
e&v1) 't'a (J. v6(J.ov exov't'cx. cpUcrEr.. 't'a

't'OU v6(J.ou
peoples who not law
have
by nature the [things] of the law
1tOl.. wcrr.. v , oi:i't'or.. v6(J.ov (J. exoV't'E
:cx.u't'o"i: dcrr..v
make,
these [the] law [although] not having to themselves are
v6(J.o
law:
I5 O'r:'t'r..V E EVDdxvuv't'cx.r.. 't'0 epyov 't'OU v6(J.ou
whoever demonstrates [that] the work
of the law
ypcx.1t't'ov EV 't'cx."i: xcx.pDLcx.r.. cx.u't'wv , cru(J.(J.cx.p't'upoucr1) cx.u't'wv

is written in the hearts
of them, bears witness
of them
't' crUVEr.. DcrEW xcx.t. (J.E't'cx.;U aAAAwv 't'WV AOYr.. cr(J.wv
the conscience
and amongst one another the thoughts
accusing
or also excusing,
I6 EV ii (J.Ep
on the day [when]
1:'0
XpLVEr.. 0 &EO 't'a xpu1t1:'a 1:'WV av&pw1tWV xcx.'t'a
judges - God the hidden things of men
according to the
EUcx.yyZAr.. 6 v (J.OU Dr.. a Xpr.. cr 't'ou 'I1)crou .
announcement of me through [the] Messiah Jesus.
2 :25 -29
25 1tEPr..'t'0(J. (J.E:v yap
WCPEAE"i: Eav v6(J.ov 1tpcXcrcr7) ' Eav DE:
Circumcision on the one hand benefits if [the] law you practice; but if
1tcx.pcx.cX't'1) v6(J.ou ii, 1tEPr..'t'0(J. crou axpoucr't'Lcx.

a transgressor of [the] law you are, the circumcision of you foreskin
yZyOVEV . 26 Eav 00v
axpoucr't'Lcx. 't'a Dr.. X cx.r.. W(J.cx.'t'cx.
If therefore the foreskin
the prescriptions
has become.
't'OU v6(J.ou cpU AcXcrcr7) , oux
axpoucr't'Lcx. cx.U't'OU d
of the law
observes,
not [will] the foreskin
of him as
,
1tEPr..'t' O(J.V Aoyr.. cr crE't'cx.t. ; 27 xcx.t. xpr..v E"i: EX CPUcrEW
And will judge the by nature
circumcision be regarded?
,
,
cx.XpO ucrncx. 't'OV v6(J.ov 't'EAOUcrcx. crE: 't'OV Dr.. a
fulfilling you who through
the law
foreskin
ypcX(J.(J.cx.'t'o xcx.t. 1tEPr..'t' O(J. 1tcx.pcx.cX't'1)v v6(J.ou . 28 ou ycx.p
For not
and circumcision [a] transgressor of [the] law.
the letter
APPENDIX
o EV -r0 cp(Xve:p0 'Ioud(Xt:o Ecrnv , oUdE EV -r0 cp(Xve:p0
the in the visible
Jew
is,
nor
the in the visible
EV (j(x.pxt ree:pr.-r0[.L 29 &)..,).., ' 0

EV
but the [one] in
in [the] flesh [is] circumcision;
-r0 xpure-r0 'Ioud(Xt:o,

secret
[is a] Jew,
xcxt ree:pr.-ro[.L xcxPdL(X EV reve:u[.wn ou ypcX.[.L[.Lcxn,

and circumcision [is] of [the] heart in [the] spirit not in [the] letter,
03
0 re(Xr.vo oux E &v-Spwrewv &)..,).., ' EX -rou -Se:ou.
of whom the praise [is] not from men
but from God.
3 :9 -12
9 TL
00v ; repoe:x0[.Le:-S(X ; ou recX.v-rw repo'{JncxcrcX.[.Le:-Scx ytXp
What then? Are we superior? Not at all!
For we earlier accused
'Iouoe<Lou<; e: XCXL tIEAA1)\lO: 1tcX\Jcx. ucp' eXtLcxp1:"Lexv ELvC{c"

Jews
and Greeks
all
under sin
to be,
10
,I
xcx-Sw yEyp(Xre-r(Xr. o-rr. oux crnv d Lx(Xr.o OUdE d,
as
it is written: that not is [there] [a] just [one] , not even one,
II
OUX crnv 0 cruv Lwv, OUX e:cr-rr.v 0 EXYJ-rWV -rov -Se:ov .

God.
Not is [there] one knowing, not is [there] one seeking
12
oux e:cr-rr.v
recX.v-re: EEX).., r.vcxv , &[.Lcx Xpe:w-SYJcrcxv '
and they became incapable of using; there is not
All
strayed,
reor. wv XPYJcr-ro-rYJ-rcx, [O\JX crnv] EW

EVO.
there is not
so much as one.
one making good use,
3 :19 -24
0 vO[.Lo ).., Eye:r. -rot:
19 OldCX[.Le:V dE on ocrcx
that as much as the law
says
to those [who are]
We know
EV -r0 vO[.L ).., cx).., d, LV(X reav cr-ro[1.cx cppcxyjj xcxt ureodr.xo
in the law [it] speaks, so that each mouth i dosed and culpable
yEVYJ-rCXr. rea 0 xocr[1.o -r0 -Se:0 '
becomes all the world
before God;
20
dr.on E pywv
thus from [the] works
vO[1.ou ou d r.XCXr.Wcre:-rcxr. reacrcx (JtXP Evwrer.ov CXu-rou '

of [the] law not will be justified
all
flesh before
him;
&.[1.cxp-rL(X.
dr.tX ytXp vO[1.ou e:re r.yvw(Jr.
for through the law [is] [the] aposteriori knowledge of sin.
21
Nuvt dE xwpt VO[1.ou dr.XCXr.ocruvYJ -Se:ou ree:cp(XvEpW-rCXr.,

But now without [the] law [the] justice
of God has been manifested,
[1.cxp-rUpOU[1.EVYJ ureo -rou vO[1.0U xcxt -rwv repocpYJ-rwv ,

attested
by the law
and the prophets,
APPENDIX
22 d t-XIXLOcrUV1J dE: -Se:ou dt-eX 1t lcr1:'e:w ['I1Jcrou] Xpt-cr1:'OU
Messiah
of God through [the] faith ofJesus
the justice
.
d mx.v1:'lX 1:'OU 1tt-cr1:'e:UOV1:'IX.C; ou yap Ecrnv dwcr1:'OA '
the believers;
for all
for [there] is not [a] difference;
23 1taV1:'e:c; yelp fLIX.P1:'OV XlX.t ucr1:'e:POUV1:'IX.t- 1:'YjC; dO1JC; 1:'OU
for all
have sinned and come short
of the glory of
-Se:OU,
God,
24 dt-XIX.LOUfLe:VOt- dWpe:eXV 1:'jj IXU1:'OU Xapt-n dt-eX 1:'Yje;

through the
being justified
freely
by the of him grace
&'1tOAU1:'pwcre:we; 1:'Yje;
EV Xpt-cr1:'0 TYJcrou '
redemption
which [is] in [the] Messiah Jesus.
3 : 27-31
27 nou 00v XIX.UX1Jcrt-e; ; Ee:XAdcr-S1J . dt-eX 1tolou
Where then [is] the boasting?
It was excluded! By what
VOfLOU ; 1:'WV epywv ; ouXl, &'AAel dt-eX VOfLOU 1tlcr1:'e:we;.

law?
Of works?
No, but
by [the] law
of faith.
28 AOyt-OfLe:-S1X. y el p dt-XIX.t-oucr-SlX.t- 1tlcr1:'e:t- av-Spw1tOV xwpt
without
to be justified by faith man
For we think
epywv VOfLOU. 29 'IOUdlX.lwv 6 -Se:oe; fLovov ; ouXt XlX.t
[the] works of [the] law.
Or ofJews [is he] the God solely? Not also
6 -Se:oe; OC;
3 0 e:t-1te:p de;
E-SVWV ;
VlX.t XlX.t E-SVWV ,
of [the] peoples? Yes also of [the] peoples, since one [is] the God who
dt-XIX.t-wcre:t- 1te:pt-1:'OfLV EX 1tlcr1:'e:w XlX.t &.xpoucr1:'lIX.V dt-eX 1:'Yje;

through and [the] foreskin
will justify circumcision by faith
1tlcr1:'e:w.
faith.
31
VOfLOV 00v
XIX1:'IX.PyoufLe:v dt-eX 1:'Yje; 1tlcr1:'e:w ;
[Is the] law therefore made inoperative through faith?
fL YEVOt-1:'0, &'AAeX VOfLOV t0'1:' av0 fLe:v .

Let it not be!
Nay [the] law we uphold firmly.
4 :2 -3
2 d y el p 'AplX.el fL E epywv Edt-XIX.t-W-S1J , exe:t- XlX.uX1JfLlX.
For if
Abraham from [the] works was justified, he has [cause for] boasting;
&'AA' ou 1tpO -Se:Ov .

but not before God.
1:'l YeXp
yplX.cp AEye:t- ;
For what [does] the writing say?
E1tlcr1:'e:ucre:V dE: 'AplX.eXfL 1:'0 -Se:0, XlX.t EAoylcr-S1J lX.u1:'0

Believed
Abraham in God, and it was counted unto him
de; dt-XIXLOcruV1JV .
in justice.
APPENDIX
4 :10 -22
10 rt:w o0v EAOyLcr,s"Y) ; EV rt:e:: p L'C"ofLTI Qvn EV
How then was it reckoned? In circumcision being or in
&:Xpoucr'C"Lq:, oux EV rt:e:: p L 'C"OfLTI

&AA' EV &xpoucr'C"Lq: '
the foreskin,
not in [the] circumcision but In [the] foreskin!
II xat cr"Y)fLciov EAa[3e:: v rt:e:: p L'C"o[J;fj crcppC(y'IOC( 'C"Yj
And [the] sign he received of circumcision seal
of the
oLxaLocruv"Y) 'C"Yj rt: Lcr'C"e:: w 'C"Yj EV 'C"TI &:xpoucr'C"Lq:,

justification
of faith
that in the foreskin,
d 'C"O dVc(L c(U'C"OV rt:C('C"epC( mx.v'C"wv 'C"wv rt:Lcr'C"e:: U OV'C"(uv
in order - to be him
father
of all
the believers
OL'
&:xpoucr'C"La, d 'C"o AOYLcr,sYjvaL c(U'C"o'I ['C"v]
through [the] foreskin,
for - to be reckoned to them oLxawcruv"y)v ,
justice,
12 XC(t rt:C('C"epa rt:e:: P l,'C"0fLYj 'C"0'I oux EX

and father
of circumcision to those not of
rt:e:: p L'C"0fLYj fLoVOV &:AA2I. xat 'C"0'I cr'C"Q{,xoucrl,V 'C"0'I

in the
circumcision only, but also for those who walk
'[XV e:: cr l,V 'C"Yj EV &:xpoucr'C"Lq: rt:Lcr'C"e:: w 'C"ou rt:a'C"po
of the in foreskin
faith
of the father
steps
fLwV 'ApaG:fL
of us Abraham.
13 Ou yrip OL2I. VOfLOU

Ert:ayye:: A LC(
For not through [the] law [was] the promise
'C"0 'Apa2l.fL 'C"0 crrt:epfLan c(u'C"ou, 'C"O xA"Y)poVOfLoV

to Abraham or to the seed
of him that heir
au'C"ov e::LvaL xocrfLou, &:AAa Ol,2I. Ol,xC(wcruv"Y) rt:Lcr'C"e:: w .
he
be
of [the] world, but through [the] justice
of faith.
14 d y2l.p ot EX vOfLoU
xA"Y)povofLoL, xe:: x evw'C"aL
has been emptied
For if
those from [the] law [be] heirs,
rt:Lcrn xat xa'C"py"Y)'C"al,
Ert:ayye:: A La '
- faith
and has made inoperative the promise;
15 0 y2l.p vOfLo
for the law
opyv xa'C"e:: pyG:e::'C" aL ' o() OS

oux Ecrnv vOfLo, OUOS
but of which [there] is not law,
wrath puts to work;
neither
rt:apG:acrL.
16 L1L2I. 'C"oU'C"O EX rt:Lcr'C"e:: w, tva
[is there] transgression. Wherefore [it is] of faith,
in order that [it be]
xa'C"2I. XG:PLV , d 'C"o e::L vaL e:: aLav 'C"v Ert:ayye:: A Lav
by
grace
to be valid
the promise
rt:C(v'C"t 'C"0 crrt:epfLan, ou 'C"0
EX 'C"OU vOfLoU fLoVOV
for all the seed,
not to the [one] hum the law
alone
APPENDIX
153
&AAa XCXl -r0

EX TCLcr-rEW<;; 'ApcxatJ., 0<;; Ecrnv TCCX-rp
but also to the one from [the] faith of Abraham, who is
father
mxv-rulV (.Lwv ,
of us,
of all
17 xcxSw<;; ySYPCXTC-rW.. on TCCX-rSPCX
as
it is written
that father
TCOAAWV ESVWV -rSSEl.. X cX crE, xcx-rsvcxv-rl.. 06

of many peoples I have placed you, before [him] whom
ETCLcr-rEUcrEV SEOU -rOU OTCOl.. O UV-ro<;; -rou<;; VEXpOU<;;
he believed
God who makes alive
the dead
XCXl XCXAOUV-rO<;; -ra (.L Qv-rcx w<;; Qv-rcx '
and calls
things not being as being;
18 0<;; TCCXp'
who against
EATCLocx ETC EATCLol.. ETC Lcr-rEucrEV, d<;; -r0 YEVScrSCXl..

that to become
hope
hope
believed,
cxu-rOV TCCX-rSPCX TCOAAWV ESVWV xcx-ra
-ro
him
father
of many peoples according to what
dp1)(.LsvoV ou-rw<;; e:cr-rCXl.. -r0 crTCSp(.LCX crou, 19 XCXl
has been said; thus
will be the seed
of you,
and,
(.L &crSEVcrCX<;; -rn TCLcr-rEl.. xcx-rEv61)crEv -r0 ECXU-rOU
not being weak
in faith,
he considered the of himself
crw(.Lcx VEVEXPW(.Lsvov , EXCX-rOV-rcxs-r1)<;; TCOU UTCcXPXWV ,
one hundred years roughly being,
body dead,
XCXl -rv vsxpwcrl..V -r-Yj<;; (.L-rpcx<;; 1: cXpp a<;; '
and the deadness
of the womb
of Sarah;
20 d<;; OE -rv
for - the
ETCCXYYEALcxv -rOU SEOU

ou Ol.. E xpLSYj -rn &TCl.. cr -rL, &AA'
of God [was] not doubted
promise
in lack of faith, but
EVEOUVCX(.LWS1) -rn TC Lcr-rE l.. , oou<;; 06cxv -r0 SE0
giving glory to God
was potentialized with faith,
21 XCXl
and
TCA1)pOcpop1)Sd<;;
on 0 ETCYyEA-rCXl.. ouvcx-r6<;; Ecrnv
he is
having been carried into fullness that what he has promised able
XCXl TCm-YjcrCXl.. .
also to make.
22 0l.. 0
[XCXl] EAOyLcrS1) cxu-r0 d<;;
Therefore also it was imputed to him for
o l..XCXl.. o crt)V1)V .
justice.
5:12 -I4
-rOU-rO wcrTCEP Ol.. ' EVO<;; &VSpWTCOU a(.Lcxp-rLcx
12 l.. a
Through this
just as by one man
sin
d<;; -rOV x6cr(.Lov dcr-YjASEV, XCXl Ol.. a

-r-Yj<;; a(.Lcxp-rLcx<;;
into the world
and because ofentered,
sin
APPENDIX
1 54
o &&.VtX"C'O';, XtXt OU"C'W'; d.; 1t&'v"C'tX'; &'v&pW1tou.; 0
- death,
and thus
'
to
7'
all
men
&&.VtX"C'O'; Ot;YjA&EV, Ecp cp 1ttXV1:'E'; 'fJtXP1:'OV '

because all
sinned;
passed,
death
13 &XPc, YtXp
for until
v6ou &tXp1:'ltX v E:V x6crcp, &tXp1:'ltX Oe: oux

was in [the] world, but sin
not
sin
law
-f) QV1:'o,; v6ou '
E:AAOYE11:'tXc,
imputed [since there] not being law;
14 &'AAtX
but
E:tXcrlAEUcrEV 0 &&.VtX1:'o,; &'1t0 'AOtX expc, MwUcrEW';

- death
from Adam until Moses
reigned
XtXt E:1tt 1:'Ou,; -f) &tXP1:'crtXV1:'tX'; E:1tt 1:'0 Oo c,wtXn 1:''Yj.;
even on those not sinning
in the likeness
as the
1ttXPtX&.crEW'; 'Ao&', 0'; E:crnV 1:'U1to.; 1:'OU EAAOV1:'O';.
transgression
of Adam, who is
[a] figure of the coming one.
S:19 -2I
19 wcr1tEp ytXP Oc,tX 1:''Yj.; 1ttXPtXxo'Yj.; 1:'OU EVO'; &.V&pW1tOU
For just as
through the disobedience of one man
&tXP1:'WAOt XtX1:'Ecr1:'&'&"f)crtXV ot. 1tOAAOl, OU1:'w,; XtXt Oc,tX

sinners
[they] were made [as] - many,
thus
also through
1:''Yj.; 01ttXxo'Yj.; 1:'OU
EvOt; OlxtXWc, XtX1:'tXcr1:'tX&croV1:'tXc,
the obedience of [only] one just
shall be made
ot. 1tOAAOl.
the many.
20 v60.; oe: 1ttXpEC,cr'YjA&EV (,VtX 1tAEOV&'crYJ
[The] law then came forth
that might abound
1:'0 1ttXp&.1t1:'WtX 06 oe: E:TCAE6VtXcrEV &tXp1:'ltX,

the offence;
but where abounded
- sin,
01tEpE1tEplcrcrEUcrEV x&'p c,.; ,
much more did abound - grace,
reigned
21 (,VtX wcr1tEp
so that just as
"f) tXtXpntX EV 1:'cp

- sin
unto - death,
OU1:'W'; XtXc,
even
so
X&.PC,.; tXcrC,AEUcrYJ Oc,tX OC,XtXwcruv"f)'; d.; w-f)v

- grace might reign through justice
unto life
tXLWVC,OV oc,tX 'I"f)crou Xpc,cr1:'OU 1:'OU xuplou WV .
through Jesus Messiah
eternal
the Lord
of us.
7."7-24
7 Tl 00v
E:pOUEV ; 0 v60.; &tXp1:'ltX ; -f) yevoc,"C'O '
May it not be!
What therefore shall we say? The law [is] sin?
I 55
APPENDIX
&AACJ. I:V <XfLlXpl:LlXv oux eyvwv d fL ot.a VOfLOU '
not did I know unless through [the] law;
sin
Nay
I:V I:E yCJ.p bt:t.&UfLLlXv oux j)OEt.V
d fL 0 VOfLoe;
desire
not did I know unless the law
for the
8 &cpoPfLv OE AIXOUcrlX
But [once] [a] drive having taken
eAEYEV ' oux bt:t.&UfLcrEt.e;

said:
not shall you desire!
<XfLlXpl:LIX 0t.CJ.
I:'fje; EVI:OA'fje;
XIXI:Et.py&'crIXI:O EV EfLot
- sin
by way of the commandment made operative
in me
reacrlXv Em,&ufLLIXV ' xwpte; yCJ.p VOfLOU <XfLlXpl:LIX VEXp&..
every desire;
for without law
sin [is]
dead.
9 Eyw OE ewv
xwpte; vOfLoU reOI:E ' EA&OucrYJe; OE

was alive without law
once; but having come
I:'fje; EVI:OA'fje;
<XfLlXpl:LIX &VEYJcrEV,
revived,
the commandment - sin
10 Eyw OE &reE&IXVOV ,
I
then died,
fLOt. EVI:OA
de; wv,
XlXt EUpE&YJ
and [it] was discovered [that] for me the commandment the one for life,
IXUI:YJ
de; &&'VIXI:OV '
this [one] [was] unto death
II
yCJ.p <XfLlXpl:LIX &cpoPfLv

for sin
[a] drive
AIXOUcrlX
Ot.CJ. I:e; EVI:OA'fje;
EYJre&.I:YJcrEv fLE XlXt
taking occasion through the commandment deceived
me and
Ot.'
IXUI:'fje; &reEXI:Et.VEV.
by means of it
killed [ me] .
I2
wcrl:E 0 fLEV vOfLoe;

Wherefore the law
lXyt.1X XlXt ot.xlXLIX XlXt lXylX

lXy t.Oe; , XlXt EVI:OA
' .
and good.
is holy, and the commandment holy and just
I3
&YIX&ov EfLot EYEVEI:O &&'VIXI:Oe; ; fL yEVOt.I:O

To 00v
Let it not be!
to me has become death?
Therefore good
&AACJ. <XfLlXpI:LIX, t VIX cpIXV1j

<XfLlXpI:LIX, 0t.CJ. I:OU
But - sin,
that it [might] appear [as] sin,
through the
&ylX&OU fLOt. XIXI:EPYIXOfLEVYJ &&'VIXI:OV , t VIX yEVYJI:IXt.
so that might become
to me making operative
death,
good
XIX&' ureEpoAV <XfLlXpI:WAOe; <XfLlXpl:LIX 0t.CJ. I:'fje;
exceedingly
sinful
- SIn
through the
I4 O'[ OlXfLEV yCJ.p on 0 vOfLoe; rev EUfLlXnxoe;
EVI:OA'fje;.
spiritual
that the law
commandment. For we know
,
Ecrnv ' EyW OE cr&'pxt.VOe; Et.fLt., reEreplXfLEVOe; ureo I:V
under carnal
am, sold
but
is:
APPENDIX
I 56
cX.[Lcxp't"Lcxv .
sin.
15 0 yap
xcxn;py&O[LCXl ou YlvwcrXW
For that which I put to work
not do I know:
&EAW 't"ou't"o TCp&crcrw, &AA' o [Llcrw

ou yap o
I do,
but what I hate
for not what I want that
't"ou't"O TCOlW. 16 d OE: 0 ou &EAW 't"ou't"O TCOlW,
If then what not I want this
I make,
I make.
that
vO[LCP on XCXAO<;; . I7 vuvt OE: ouxEn EyW
crU[LCP1J[Ll 't"0
that [it is] good.
Now then no more I
I consent unto the law
xcx't"e:pyao[Lcxl cxu't"o &AAa EVOt.XOUcrcx EV E[LOt cX.[Lcxp't" Lcx.
but the dwelling
put to work
it,
In me sin.
18 olocx yap on oux ot.Xe;l EV E[LoL, 't"ou't" , crnv EV 't"n
For I know that [it] not dwells in me,
that is,
in the
crcxpxL [LOU, &ycx&ov 't"o yap &EAE:lv TCcxpaxe:l't"cxL [LOl,
flesh of me, [the] good; for the wanting is near
to me,
't"o OE: xcx't"e:pyae:cr&cxl 't"o XCXAOV OU 19 ou yap 0
but the putting to work
the good [is] not; for not what
&EAW TCOlW &ycx&ov, &AAa 0 OU &EAW XCXXOV 't"ou't"O
I want I make good,
but what not I want, evil
this
1tpacrcrw.
I do.
20 d OE: 0 ou
But if what not
ouxEn EY ;-<'t"e:pyaO[Lcxl
no longer I
put to work
E[LOt cX.[Lcxp't"Lcx.
me SIn.
&SAW syw 't"OU't"O TCOlW,

I want I
this
do,
CXU't"O &AAa ot.xoucrcx EV
it
but the dwelling in
21 e:upLcrxw apcx 't"OV VO[LOV 't"0 &EAovn

wanting
Therefore I fi n d the law
E[LOt 1tOle;lV 't"O XCXAOV , on E[LOt 't"o xcxxov TCcxpaxe:l't"cxV

is near;
in me to make the good,
when in me the evil
22 cruVOO[LCXl yap 't"0 VO[LCP 't"ou &e:ou xcx't"a
't"OV crw
for I delight
in the law
of God according to the inner
av&pw1tOV,
man,
23 AE1tW OE: E't"e:pOV VO[LOV EV 't"o"i:<;; [LEAe:crLv

but I see
another law
in the members
[LOU &V't"lcr't"PCX't"e:UO[Le:vov 't"0 VO[LCP 't"ou VOO<;; [LOU xcxt

of me fighting against
the law of the mind of me and
cxt.X[LcxAw't"Lov't"a [Le: EV 't"0 vO[LCP 't"Yj<;; a[Lcxp't"Lcx<;; 't"0
taking prisoner
me in the law
of sin
that
Qvn EV 't"o"i:<;; [LEAe:crLv [LOU. 24 TCXACXLTCWP0<;; EyW
which is in the members of me.
[A] wretched
I [am]
APPENDIX
1 57
ClvSpwreo ' "d fLE pucrE"'Ccx.r.. EX "'COU crwfLcx."'Co "'COU

Who me shall deliver hom the body
man!
Scx.vchou "'Cou"'Cou ;
this?
of death
8:I9 -25
19 yap &reoxcx.pcx.ooxLcx.
"'C1j X"'CLcrEw "'CV &1tOXO:AUr..V

For the expectation of fulfillment of the creation the revelation
"'CWV ULWV "'COU SEOU &reExOEXE"'Ccx.r.. .

of the sons of God is open to receive.
20 "'Cn yap fLcx."'Ccx.r.. o rf)"'Cr..
For to
vanity
"'Cav
X'dQ"(,. ureE"'CO:y1) , OUX EXOUcrcx., &AAa or.. a
- creation was subjected, not willingly, but because of him who
ureo"'CO:cx.v"'Ccx., Eep' EAre Lor.. 21 or.. on Xcx.L cx.U"'C x"'CLcrr..
that
also itself - creation
was subjecting [it] with [the] hope
EAEUSEPW&t)crE"'Ccx.r.. &rea "'C1j oouAdcx. "'C1j epSopa d
will be heed
from the slavery
of corruption for
"'Cv EAEUSEpLcx.v "'C1j oO1) "'CWV "'CEXVWV "'COU SEOU.
the fI'eedom
of [the] glory of the sons
of God.
22 OtOcx.fLEV yap on reacrcx. x"'CLcrr.. crUcr"'CEVcX.Er.. Xcx.L
For we know
that all
the creation bewails together and
cruvwOLVEr..
ClXpr.. "'Cou vuv
suffers the labour pains until
now;
23 ou fLoVOV OE, &AAa
but not only [this], but
Xcx.L cx.U"'COL "'Cv &recx.pxv "'Cou revEufLcx."'Co EXOV"'CE [fLe:1]

also us
the initial source of the spirit
having,
we
Xcx.L cx.U"'COL EV Ecx.U"'COL cr"'CEVo:ofLEV ULOSEcrLcx.v
also ourselves within ourselves bewail,
adoption
&reExOExofLEVor.. , "'Cv &reoAu"'Cpwcrr.. v "'COU crwfLcx."'CO fLwv ,
open to receive,
the redemption
of the body
of us.
24 "'Cn yap EAreLor.. EcrwS1) fLEV ' EAreL OE: AEreofLEV1) OUX
For in
,I
hope
EcrnV
is
hope:
we were saved; but hope
0 ycx.p
for what sees
25 d OE: 0
being seen
not
n,
"'Cr.. xcx.r..
someone, what then should [he] hope?
ou AEreofLEV EAre r.. ofLEV , Or.. '

ureOfLov1j
But if what not we see
we hope [for] ' through patience
&reExOExofLEScx..
we are open to receive.
APPEN DIX
9 :3 -9
3 YJuXOfJ."fJ v YtXp <xva,se:fJ.1X d VIXr, IXU1'Oe; EYW <X1tO 1:'OU
from the
For I could wish [a] curse were myself I
Xpr,cr1'OU U1tEP
1'WV <XOe:AWV fJ.ou 1'WV cruyye:VWV fJ.ou
Messiah for the sake of the brothers
of me the kinsmen
of me
XIX1:'tX
crapxlX, 4 o'1:'r,VEe; dcrr,V 'IcrpIXYJXt:1:'1Xr" CIlv
who
are
Israelites,
to whom [pertains]
according to [the] flesh,
uto,se:crLIX
XIXL OOIX XIXL IXL Or,IX&YjXIXr, XIXL
the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the
...
VOfJ.o,se:crLIX XIXL AIX1:'pdlX XIXL IXL E1tlXyye:ALIXr"

giving of the law and the worship and the promises,
5 wv
of whom
ot 1t1X1'Epe:e;, XIXL E CIlv

6 Xpr,cr1:'Oe; 1:'0 XIX1'tX
crapxlX
are the fathers, and ofwhom [is] the Messiah that according to [the] flesh
6 WV
E1tL 1tav1:'WV ,se:oe; e:UAOYYJ1:'Oe; de;

1:'OUe; IXLWV1Xe;,
God blessed
the being above all
throughout the ages,
<XfJ.V.
amen.
6 Oux olov OE on EX1tE1t1'WXe:V 6 Aoyoe; 1:'OU

Not as such [is] - what has fallen from the word of
,se:OU. ou ytXP 1taV1:'Ee; ot E 'IcrplXA, o\51'm ' IcrplXA '

God. For not all
those. from Israel,
these [are] Israel;
7 ouo' on
nor
dcrLv cr1tEptJ1X 'AplXafJ., 1tav1:'e:e; 1:'EXVIX, <XAA'

because are
seed
of Abraham, all [are] children, but,
EV 'IcrlXtXX XAYJ,scre:1:'IXL crm cr1tEpfJ.lX.

in Isaac
shall be called for you seed.
8 1:'OU1' , Ecr1' r,v , ou

not
That is,
1:'tX 1'EXVIX 1'e; crlXpxoe; 1:'OCU1:'1X 1'EXVIX

1:'OU ,se:ou,
they the children of the flesh [are] these [the] children of God,
<XAAtX 1'tX 1'EXVIX 1'e; E1tlXyye:ALIXe; AoyLte:1:'IXr, de; cr1tEpfJ.lX.
but the children of the promise
are counted as seed.
9 E1tlXyye:ALIXe; YtXp 6 Aoyoe; oihoe;, XIX1'tX 1:'OV XIXr,pOV
For of promise [is]
the word
this,
at
the
time
e
1:'OU1:'OV EAe:tmOfJ.IXr, XIXL e:cr1:'lXr,
1'7j kapp uwe;.
I will come and [there] will be to Sarah la] son.
this
9 :24 -28
24 oue;
XIXL ExaAe:cre:v fJ.iie; ou fJ.ovov E ' IouolXLwv
of [the] Jews
Those whom also he called
us
not only
e
<XAAtX XIXL E E,sVWV ;
25 we; XIXL EV 1'0 ncrYJE AEye:r"
but also of [the] Gentiles?
As also in - Osee he says:
APPENDIX
159
,
xcx.Aecrw TOV OU Acx.OV !-lou Acx.OV !-lou Xcx.t TV oux
I will call the not people of me people of me, and the not
ycx.1t:1j!-lev1jv ycx.1t:1j!-leV1jv
beloved
beloved:
EV T0 Tomp 06
and [it] shall be in the place where
26 xcx.t ecrTcx.t
Eppe&tj [cx.uTole;; ] ou Acx.Oe;;

!-lOU u!-lde;; , EXEl XA1j&fJcrOVTcx.t
it was said to them: Not [the] people of me [are] you, there they will be called
utot &E.OU (;)\I'"ro.
children of God living.
27 'Hcrcx.'tcx.e;; OE: XPO:Et. U1t:E:p
Esaias
TOU
on behalf of
then cries
'Icrpcx.A, Ecx.V 7i 0 &pt.,s!-lOe;; TWV utwv 'Icrpcx.A we;;

Israel:
If also be the number
of the sons of Israel as
a!-l!-lOe;; Tlje;; ,scx.AO:crcr1je;; , TO U1t:OAEt.!-l!-lcx. crW,scrETcx.t.
a remnant
shall be saved:
of the sea,
the sand
28 AOYOV ytXP crUVTEAWV Xcx.t cruvTe!-lVwv 1t:Ot.crEt xupwe;;
for [the] word fulfilling
and contracted
will make [the] Lord
E1t:t Tlje;; ylje;; .

upon the earth.
1 0 : 2 -12
2 !-lcx.pTUpW ytXp cx.uTole;; on ljAOV ,sEOU exoucrtv, &AA'
For I bear witness to them that zeal
of God they have, but
OU Xcx.T'
E1t:Lyvwcrt.v
not according to knowledge:
&YVOOUVTEe;; ytXp TV TOU ,sEOU

for not knowing
the of God
Ot.xcx.t.ocrUV1jV , xcx.t TV t,oLcx.v

1jTOUVTEe;;
justice,
and their own [justice] seeking
Tn
o t.xcx.t.ocruvn TOU ,sEOU OUX
crTljcrcx.t.,
to uphold firmly, unto the justice
of God not
U1t:ETO:Y1jcrcx.V
did they submit.
justice
4 TeAOe;; YtXp VO!-l OU
Xpt.crToe;; de;;
For [the] end of law [is] [the] Messiah for
to every one that believes.
5 MwUcrlje;; ytXp
For Moses
ypO:<pEt. on TV o t.xcx.wcrUV1jV TV EX VO!-lOU 0

writes
that
justice
the one from [the] law: The
1t:Ot.crcx.e;; av,spW1t:Oe;; crETcx.t. EV cx.UTn .
having made man
shall live by them.
6 OE:
But the
,
EX 1t:LcrTEwe;; ot.xcx.wcrUV1j OUTWe;; AeYEt. !-l Et.1t:n e;; EV
from faith
justice
thus
speaks: Do not say
in
-
de;; TOV oupcx.vov ; TOUT ,

TTI xcx.poLq. crou ' TL; cx.vcx.
, 1jcrETcx.t.
'
of you: Who shall ascend
the heart
into heaven?
This
APPENDIX
160
EO"n V Xpl.O"-rov XCI.:T:rJ..y r:t.ydv

is
[the] Messiah to bring down;
7 . -r Le; XrJ..1:" rJ.. r3o"E1:"r:t.l.
or: Who shall lead down
de; 1:"V &[3uO"O"ov ; 1:"oth' EO"nv Xpl.O"-rov EX VEXPWV

into the abyss?
That is [for] [the] Messiah from [the] dead
aVrJ..Y rJ..y dv .
to bring up.
8 &AAa 1:"L
But
ASyEl. ; 'Eyyue; O"ou 1:"0 pYj[.La

what does [it] say? Near
to you the word *
EO"nv , EV 1:"0 0"1:"6[.Lr:t.1:"L O"ou XrJ..t EV 1:"n xrJ.. p oLI?- O"ou 1:"OU1:"
of you and In the heart
of you: that
in the mouth
is,
EO"1:"l.V 1:"0 pYj[.LrJ.. 1:"Yje; TCLo"1:"EWe; 0 KfJ pUO"O"O [.LEV .
that we announce.
the word of faith
is
9 on EaV
That if
6[.LOAOYO"Yl e; EV 1:"0 0"1:"6[.LrJ..1:" L O"ou xupwv 'IY)O"ouv , XrJ..t

you shall confess in the mouth
of you Lord
Jesus,
and
1UO"1:"EUO"ne; EV 1:"n xrJ.. p oLI?- O"ou on 6 ,sEOe; wJ-rov
you shall believe in the heart
of you that - God him
yEl.PEV EX VEXPWV , O"w,sO"n
10 xrJ.. p oLI?- yap
raised
from [the] dead, you shall be saved: for with [the] heart
TCl.O"1:"EUE1:"rJ.. l. de; Ol.xrJ.. l. oO"uvy)v , 0"1:"6[.LrJ..n
OE: 6 [.LOAOYE'i1:"rJ.. l.
it is believed unto justice,
with the mouth then it is confessed
de; O"w1:"y)p LrJ..v . II ASyEl. yap 1) yprJ..cp . TCiXe; 6 TCl.O"1:"EUWV
unto salvation.
For says
the writing, all who believe
ErC ' wJ-r0 OU XrJ..1:" rJ.. l.O"XUV,so"E1:"rJ.. l. .
in
him
not shall be ashamed.
12 OU yap EO"nv
For not is [there]
O[.rJ.. o"1:"OA 'IouorJ.. L ou 1:"E xrJ..t " EAAY)VOe;, 6 yap rJ..U 1:"Oe;
and Greek,
a difference of Jew
for the same
xupwe; TCaV1:"WV , TCAOU1:"WV de; TCtXV1:"rJ..e; 1:"OUe;
over all, [is] rich
to all
those
Lord
&nLXAouevou u6v
calling upon
him.
11:1-16
Asyw O;)V , [.LY) rJ..TC WO"rJ..1:" O 6 ,sEOe; 1:"OV ArJ..O V rJ..U 1:"OU ;
Therefore I say, did not cast away - God the people of him?
[.L ySVOl.1:"o xrJ..t yap Eyw 'IO"prJ..Y) AL1:"Y)e; d[.LL, EX

Let it not be!
For even I
[an] Israelite
am,
hom
, ,
O"TCSp[.Lr:t.1:"Oe; 'AprJ.. a [.L, cpUAYje;
BEVl.rJ.. [.LLv . 2 OUX rJ..TC WO"rJ..1:" O
the seed
Not thrust off"
of Abraham, of [the] tribe of Benjamin.
6 ,sEOe; 1:"OV ArJ..OV rJ..U 1:"OU OV TCPOSyVW. OUX O' Or:t.1:"E
- God the people of him whom he foreknew. Or not do you know
* Translators note: Agamben translates lexis as parola, which means both
word and utterance, the substance of speech and speech itself: like the logos.
APPENDIX
r6r
EV 'HALq: 'tL AEyEr. yplXCp , we; EV'tUYXO:VEr. 'tc{> &Ec{> xlX'ta

in Elias what says
the writing, as [an] encounter with God according to
'tou 'IO"plXA;
Israel?
3 XUpr.E, 'tOIle; TCpOcp'tIXe; O"ou &'TCEX'tEr.VIXV ,

Lord,
the prophets
of you they killed,
'to: &uO"wO"'tpr.O: O"ou XIX'tEo"XIXIXV , x&.yw UTCEAElcp&rjV

the altars
of you they razed,
and I was lefi:
tJ-ovoe; XlXl, 'Y)'touO"r.v 'tv uXv tJ-OU. 4 &'AAO:
alone, and they seek the life
of me.
But
'tL AEYEr. 1X1J-rc{> 0 XP'Y)tJ-lXnO"tJ-oe; ; XIX'tEAr.TCOV EtJ-IXU'tc{>
I reserved
for myself
what says
to him the oracle?
ETC'tIXXr.O"xr.ALoue; &VOplXe;, 0'[nVEe; OUX e:XIXtJ-IXV yovu
[a] knee
seven thousand
men,
who [did] not bend
'tTI BO:IXA.
to Baal.
o{hwe; o1)v XlXl, EV 'tc{> VUV XIXr.pc{> AELtJ-tJ-1X

Thus then also in the of now time
[a] remnant
XIX't'
EXAOyV XO:Pr.'toe; yEYOVEV 6 d OE: xO:pr.n,
according to [the] election of grace has become;
but if by grace, [and]
OUXEn E e:pywv , ETCEL xO:pr.e; OUXEn yLVE'tIXr. xO:pr.e;.
no more from works, then
grace no more becomes grace.
7 TL
o1)v ; 0 ETCr.'Y)'td 'IO"plXA, 'tou'tO OUX ETCE'tUXEV,

What then? What seeks
Israel,
this [it did] not obtain,
OE: EXAOy ETCE'tUXEV Ot OE: AOr.TCOl, ETC wpw&'Y)O"IXV ,

- but election [it] obtained: but those remnants were hardened,
8 XIX&O:TCEp yEypIXTC'tIXr.
thus
e:OWXEV IXU'tOLe; 0 &Eee;

it has been written: Gave
to them - God
TCVEUtJ-1X XIX'tIXVUEWe;, Ocp&IXAtJ-OUe; 'tou tJ- AETCEr.V

[a] spirit of torpor,
eyes
for not seeing
xo:l, (;)'to: 'tou tJ- &'XOUEr.V , Ewe; 't1je; O"tJ-EPOV
and ears for not hearing,
unto this
tJ-EplXe;.
day.
9 XlXl, IXUl,O AEYEr. yEV'Y)&'tW 'tpO:TCE1X

And David says:
Let be made a table
IXU'tWV de; TClXyLolX XlXl, de; &pIXV XlXl, de; O"XO:VOIXAOV

theirs for [a] snare and for [a] trap and for [a] stumbling block
XlXl, de; &'V'tO:TCOOOtJ-1X IXU'tOLe;, 10 O"xonO"&'twO"o:v
and for [a] recompense unto them,
were darkened
Ot Ocp&O:AtJ-Ol, IXU'tWV 'tou tJ- AETCEr.V, XlXl, 'tev vw'tOV
the eyes
of them so as not to see,
and the backs
APPENDIX
162
IXlrr wv OUX 7tIXV"'C'O auyxlX[.Lov .

bent downward.
of them through all
II
AEyw o0v ,
Therefore I say,
[.L E7t"'C'lXlaIXV '(. VIX 7tEaWalv ; [.L YEVOl"'C'O

have they stumbled that they should fall? Let it not be!
&'AACL "'C'0
Rather by
IX1J"'C'WV 7tIXPIX7t"'C'w[.LIXn aW"'C'YJpLIX

"'C'o1
their
false steps
the salvation [is come] to the
E&ve:alV , d "'C'O 7tlXplXYJAwalXl IXUTo\).

peoples, for - making jealous them.
12 d OE: "'C'O
But if the
7tlXpcX.7t"'C'W[.L1X IXU"'C'WV 7tAOU"'C'O xoa[.LOU XlXt "'C'o "'C''''C'YJ [.LIX

false steps
of them [is] [the] wealth of [the] world and the diminishing
IXU"'C'WV 7tAOU"'C'O E&VWV , 7toacp
[.LiiAAOV "'C'O 7tApW[.L1X
of them [the] wealth of peoples, by how much more
the fullness
e
IXU"'C'WV . 1 3 Y[.L1v OE: AEyw "'C'01 E&ve:alV . Ecp' oaov [.LE:V
of them.
But to you I say to the peoples. * Inasmuch as
00v d[.Ll EyW E&VWV &.7tOa"'C'oAo, "'C'v OlIXxovLIXV [.LOU
am I
of Gentiles emissary,
the ministry
of me
oocX.W,
I honor,
1 4 d 7tW
7tlXplXYJAwaw [.LOU "'C'V acX.pxlX
if somehow I make jealous of me the flesh
XlXt awaw n VCL E IXU"'C'WV .

and I will save some of them.
15 d YCLP &.7tOOA
For if
the casting away
IXU"'C'WV
XIX"'C'IXAAlXy xoa[.Lou, "'C'L
7tpOaAYJ[.Lt.
of them [be] reconciliation of [the] world, what [will be] the reintegration
d [.L w EX ve:xpwv ;
if not life from the dead?
16 d OE: &.7tIXPX ayLIX, XlXt

But if the initial source [is] holy, so [is]
"'C'O cpUplX[.LlX XlXt d pL1X lXyt.lX, XlXt ot xAcX.Om.

the dough;
and if the root [is] holy, so [are] the branches.
11:25-26
25 Ou YCLP &EAW U[.Lii &.yvoe:1v , &.oe:AcpoL, "'C'O
For not do I want you not to know, brothers, the
[.Lua"'C'pt.ov "'C'oU"'C' 0 , '{.VIX

[.L "'C'e: E:lXu"'C'01
mystery
this,
in order that not you be for yourselves
cppOV l[.LOt., on 7tWpWal &'7tO !J-EpOU "'C'0 'IaplXA
wise,
that hardness in
part
to Israel
YEYOVe:V axpt. 06 "'C'O 7tApW[.L1X "'C'WV E&VWV e:!.aEA&7l ,
has happened until - the fullness
of the peoples enters,
26 XlXt oU"'C'w 7tii 'IaplXA awae:"'C'IXt., XIX&W
and thus
all Israel
shall be saved, thus
* Translators note: Agamben translates the Greek "ethnos" as "gentili" or
"pagani," which I have translated as either "people" or "Gentile" depending
on the context.
APPENDIX
yEypaTr't"at. Et. EX 2;t.wv 0 pUOfLEVO<;, &TrOO"'t"pEY;Et.
it has been written: will come fi-om Zion the saviour,
he will expel
&o"Eda<; &TrO ' Iaxw.
hom Jacob.
impiety
I3 : 8-IO
8 MYJOEVL fLYJOE:V O<pdAE't"E, d fL 't"0 &AAAOU<; &yaTr'av '
To no one anything be owed,
except one another
to love;
o YcXP
&yaTrwv 't"ov E't"EpOV VOfLOV TrETrAPWXEV .

for the one loving
the other
law
has fulfilled.
9 't"0 YcXP OU fLO t.XEUO"Et.<; , OU <pOVEUO"Et.<;, ou XAEY;Et.<;,
For: Not shall you adulter, not shall you kill, not shall you steal,
OUX ETrt.&ufLo"Et.<;, xaL d n<; E:'t"Epa EV't"OA ,

EV
not shall you desire, and if some other commandment, in
't"<{) AOYC!iJ 't"ou't"C!iJ &VaXE<paAat.Ou't"at., [EV 't"<{)] . &yaTro"Er.<;
the word this
is recapitulated,
in it:
Love
't"OV TrAYJO"Lov o"ou w<; O"Eau't"OV .
the neighbor of you as yourself
10
&yaTrYJ 't"<{)
The love
to the
TrAYJO"Lov xaxov oux EpyaE't"ar. TrApwfLa 00v

vOfLoU
neighbor evil
not works:
fulfilling
therefore of [the] law
&yaTr1J.
[is] love.
From the First Letter to the Corinthians

I:22 -29
22 ETrEt.O xaL 'Iouoa1ot. O"YJfLda at't"ouO"t.V xaL
Since
both Jews
signs
ask for
and
" EAAYJVE<; O"o<pLav YJ't"ouO"t.V,

Greeks
wisdom seek,
23 fLEl<; OE: xYJPUO"O"OfLEV

but we
announce
Xpr.O"'t"OV EO"'t"aupwfLEvOV , 'IouoaLot.<; fLE:V

O"xavOaAov,
unto Jews
on one hand [aJ stumbling block
the Messiah crucified,
fLwpLav, 24 aU't"ol<;
E&VEO"t.V OE:
OE: 't"Ol<; XAYJ't"Ol<;,
to Gentiles on the other foolishness,
for themselves instead those called,
'IouoaLOt.<; 't"E xcxL " EAAYJO"r. V, Xpt.O"'t"ov &EOU ouvafLr. V
Jews
and even Greeks,
[the] Messiah of God power
xaL &EOU O"o<p Lav .
and o f God wisdom.
25 on 't"0 fLWPOV 't"OU &EOU

Because the foolishness of God
APPENDIX
crOCPW-rEpOV -rWV &V&pW1tWV Ecr-rLv , xcxl -r0 &cr&EVE
is,
and the weakness
wiser
than men
-rOU &EOU crXUpO-rEPOV -rWV &v&pW1twv .
than men.
of God [is] stronger
26 BAE1tE-rE
For you see
yap -rv XA'ljcrt-V u[l-wv , &OEAcpoL, on ou 1tOAAOt crocpot

[are the] wise
the calling of you, brothers, that not many
xo:-r a
crapxo:, ou 1tOAAOt ouvo:-roL, ou 1tOAAOt EUyEVE'i: '
according to flesh,
not many
[the] powerful, not many
[the] wellborn;
27 &AAa -ra [l-wpa
-rOU xocr[l-ou EEAEo:-rO 6 &EO
but the foolish things of [the] world were chosen [by] - God
'{.vo:
xo:-ro:t-crXUV71 -rou crocpou, xo:t -ra &cr&EV'lj -rOU
in order to shame
the wise,
and the weak things of
xo:-ro:t-crXUV71 -ra
xocr[l-OU EEAEo:-rO 6 &EO tVo:
the world were chosen [by] - God in order to shame
the
crxupa,
mighty,
28 xo:t -ra &yEV'lj -rOU xocr[l-OU xo:t -ra

and the base
of [the] world and the
EOU&EV't][l-EVO: EEAEo:-rO 6 &EO, -ra [l- Qv-ro:, '{.vo:

contemptible
were chosen [by] - God, the things not being, in order
'tcX. 0\11:'0:
xa1:'o:pycrn ,
the things being to abolish,
29 01tW
[l- xo:uxcr't]-ro:t- 1tacro:

in order [that] not may boast
all
crap EVW1tt,OV -rOU &EOU.

flesh before
God.
2 :1-5
K&yw EA&WV 1tpO U[l-O:, &OEAcpoL, A&OV ou xo:&'
And I coming toward you, brothers, came not according to
U1tEPOXV AOYOU crocpLo: Xo:-rO:YYEAAWV u[l-'i:v -ro

to you the
superiority of word or of wisdom announcing
[l-o:p-rupt,OV -rOU &EOU.
testimony
of God.
2 OU yap Exp t-va n

dOEVo:tFor not I judged anything to know
EV U[l-'i:v d [l- 'I't]crouv Xpt-cr-rOV xo:t -rOu-rOV

among you except Jesus
Messiah
and this one
Ecr-rO:UpW[l-EVOV.
crucified.
3 x&yw EV &cr&Evd xo:t EV cpo<P
And I in weakness
and in fear
xo:t EV -rpo[l-<P 1tOAA EYEVO[l-'t]V 1tpO u[l-a,

and in trembling much was
toward you,
4 xo:t 6
and the
AOyO [l-OU xo:t -ro xpuy[l-a [l-OU

oux EV 1tEt-&O'i:
word of me and the announcement of me [was] not in persuasive
APPENDIX
crocpLa A6ym, &AA' E:V &1todd;e:t. 1tve:u[La't'o xat
of wisdom words,
but with demonstration of spirit
and
dUVcX.[Le:W,
potentiality,
'r. va
1tLcrn u[Lwv [LY) Yi E:V crOcpLq.
in order that the faith
ofyou not be in [the] wisdom
&V&pW1tWV &AA' E:V dUVcX.[Le:t. &e:ou.

of men
but in [the] power of God.
7:I7-24
17 Et [LY) ExcX.cr't'CJ> w [Le:[LEpt.Xe:V 6 xupt,Q, Exacr't'OV
Unless to each as portioned out the Lord,
each
w XEXA'YJXe:V 6 &e:6, o(hw 1te:pt.1ta't'd't'w. xat

as called
walk.
God, so
And
OU't'w E:V 't'at: E:XxA'YJcrLat. 1tcX.crat. dt.a't'cX.crcro[Lat..
thus
among the communities all
l arder.
18 1te:pt.'t'e:'t'[L'YJ[LEVO n E:XA&'Y) ; [LY) E:1tt.cr1tcX.cr&w
[Of the] circumcised who was called? Let him not be uncircumcised!
E:V &xpOUcr't'Lq. xExA'YJ't'aL n ;

[LY) 1te:pt.'t'e:[LV Ecr&W.
With the foreskin
[was] called someone? Let him not be circumcised!
19 1te:pt.'t'0[LY) OUdEV E:crn V, xat &xpoucr't'La OUdEV
- Circumcision nothing is,
and the foreskin
nothing
E:crn V, &AAa 't'P'YJcrt. E:V't'OAWV

&e:ou. 20 Exacr't'O E:V
is,
but [the] guarding of commandments of God.
Each
in
't'Yj xAcre:t.
E:XA&'YJ , E:V 't'au't'?) [Le:VE't'W.
21 dOUAO
the calling in which he was called, in this
let him remain. A slave
E:XA&'Y) ; [L
crm [Le:AE't'W &AA' d xat duvacrat.
you were called? Let it not to you be a concern! But if also you are able
E:Ae:U&e:pO ye:vEcr&at., [LiXAAOV xp1jO'(n.
22 6 yap E:V
free
to become, rather
make use [of it]. For the one in
XUpLCJ> XA'YJ&d dOUAO &1te:Ae:U&e:pO XUPLOU E:cr't'LV
of [the] Lord is;
the Lord being called slave
freed
6[LOLW
6 E:Ae:U&e:pO XA'YJ&e:t dOUA6 E:crnV Xpt.cr't'ou.
in like manner, the free one
being called slave
is
of [the] Messiah.
23 n[L1j
yopcX.cr&'Y)'t' e: [LY) yL ve:cr&e: dOUAOt.
With a price you were bought; do not become slaves
&V&pW1tWV.
of men.
24 Exacr't'o E:V <;>

E:XA&'Y) , &'de:ACPOL,
Each
i n which h e was called, brothers,
E:V 't'ou't'CJ> [Le:VE't'W

1tapa &e:<;l.
in this
let him remain before God.
APPENDIX
r66
7:29 -32
29 -rou-ro Os q)"f)[.Lc-, &OEAcpoL, 0 xa:C-pOe;
But this
I say,
brethren
time
cruVEcr-ra:A[.LSVOe; Ecr-rLv ' -r0 Am11:0V tva:

Xa:t ol
contracted
is;
the rest
in order that also the
EXOV-rEe; yuVa:LXa:e; we; [.L EXOV-rEe; (;)crc-v , 30 xa:t ol
ones having wives
as not having
may be,
and the
xAa:Lov-rEe; we; [.L xAa:Lov-rEe;, xa:t ol Xa:LpOV-rEe; we;
ones weeping as not weeping,
and the ones rejoicing as
[.L Xa:LpOV-rEe;, xa:t ol &yoPtXOV-rEe; we; [.L
and the ones buying
as not
not rejoicing,
Xa:-rSXOV-rEe;,
possessing,
31 xa:t ol xpw[.LEvm -rOY xocr[.Lov we;
and the ones using
the world
as
[.L xa:-ra:xpw[.LEvm 11:a:p tXyE C- yap -ro crx1i [.La: -rOU

not using it up:
for passes away the figure of
xocr[.Lou -rou-rou.
world
this.
32 0SAW OE: u[.Liie; &[.LEpL[.Lvoue;
I want now you
without care
ELva:c-.
to be.
9 : 19 -22
19 'EAEuB-Epoe; yap WV
For free
EX mx.v-rwv 11:acrc-v E[.Lo:.u-rov

to all myself
being i'om all
EOOUAWcro:.,
'L Vo:. -roue; 11:Adovo:.e; XEPOcrW '
I remained a slave, that the more
I may gain
20 Xo:.t
and
EYEVO[.L1JV -rOLe; 'Iouoa:Lme; we; 'Iouoo:.L oe;, 'LVo:.

become
to the Jews
as Jew,
so that
'Iouoo:.L oue; XEPOcrW ' -rOLe;
U11:0 vO[.Lov
we; U11:0
I may win over; with those under [the] law [who are] as under
Jews
vO[.Lov, [.L WV o:.u-roe; U11:0 vO[.LOV , 'Lv 0:. -roue;
U11:0
the law, not being myself under [the] law, so that those [who are] under
VO[.Lov XEPOcrW '
the law I may gain;
&vo[.Loc-e; we; &vo[.Loe;, [.L

with [the] lawless
as without law, not
21 -rOLe;
WV &vo[.Loe; &EOU &AA' EVVO[.LOe; Xpc-cr-rou,

'LV 0:.
being without law of God but in [the] law of [the] Messiah, so that
XEPOVW -roue; &VO[.Loue;
I win over the lawless;
22 EYEVO[.L1JV -rOLe;
I became
with the
APPENDIX
&cr&e:VSCHV &cr&e:v, 'iva
1:'OU &cr&e:Ve:L xe:pocrW '
I may win over;
weak
weak,
in order that the weak
1:'6t: TICXcrr.. v YSYONa
TIeXV1:' a , ' va
TIcX.V1:'W nvo: crwcrw.
with all
I have become all,
in order that assuredly someone I may save.
I O : I- 6
Ou &SAW yo:p U[Lcx &yvoe:1v , &oe:AcpoL, on ot

For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that the
TIa1:'spe: [LWV TIcX.V1:'e: UTIO 1:'V Ve:CPSAY)V crav xat.
fathers
of us all
under the cloud
were and
TIcX.V1:'e: Ot.O: 1:'"1j &aAcX.crcrY) Ot."1jA&OV ,
all
through the sea
passed,
2 xat. TIcX.V1:'e:
and all
d 1:'OV MwUcr"1jv E:aTI1:'Lcrav1:'o E:V 1:'n Ve:cpSAY) xat.

unto Moses
were immersed in the cloud
and
E:V 1:'n &aAcX.crcrY)
in the sea
3 xat. TIcX.V1:'e: 1:'0 au1:'O TIvE:U[Lanxov
pw[La Ecpayov ,
food
ate,
4 xat. TIcX.V1:'e: 1:'0 au 1:' 0 TIve:u[Lanxov

the same spiritual
and all
and all
the same spiritual
ETIt.OV TIO[LIX ' ETI t.VOV yo:p E:X TIve:u[LlXnx"1j

drink drank: for they drank from [aJ spiritual
&XOAOU&OUcrY)
TIS1:'PIX, TIS1:'PIX OE: v 6 Xpt.cr1:'O.
that accompanied [them] rock,
the rock
really was the Messiah.
5 'AAA' oux E:V 1:'o1 TIAdocrt.v IXU1:'WV e:uooxY)cre:v 6
But
not
in the
most
of them was pleased
&e:O ' XIX1:'e:cr1:'PW&Y)crIXV yo:p E:V 1:'n E:p[L 6 1:'IXU1:'1X

God; for they were prostrated
in the desert.
These things
OE: 1:'UTIOt. [Lwv E:ye:v&Y)crlXv , d 1:'0 [L dvlXt. [Lcx
- [as] figures of us were generated, for the not to be us
E:TIt.&U[LY)1:'O: XIXXWV , XIX&W XIXXe:LVOt. E:TIt.&U[LY)crIXV .
of evil things, like
those who also desired [them] .
desirous
Io :n
II 1:'au1:'1X OE:
1:'UTIt.xw cruvsat. ve:v E:xd vOt. , E:ypcX.CPy)

But these things as figure that happened to them,
were written
OE: TIPO vou&e:crLlXv [LWV , d OU 1:'0: 1:'SAy) 1:'WV

for
admonition of us, in whom the ends of the
aLWvwv xa1:'v1:'Y)xe:v .
times
came face to a.ce.
APPENDIX
168
I3 : I-I3
'EO:.v 1:'<XL<; yAWcrcrr.t.r.<; 1:'WV &vB-PW1tWV Ar.t.AW xr.t.t

of men
I speak and
If also with the tongues
1:'WV &yyEAwV, &YO:1ty)v DE fL EXW, yEyOVr.t.

Xr.t.AXO<;
not I have, I have become brass
of angels,
but love
y)XWV
XUfLr.t.AOV &Ar.t.AO:OV .
resounding or [a] cymbal clanging.
2 Xr.t.t EO:.V EXW
And if also I have
1tpo<pY)1:'dr.t.v xr.t.t dDw 1:'0:. fLucr1:'Pr.r.t. 1tO:V1:'r.t. xr.t.t

and
all
prophecy
and I know the mysteries
EXW 1tacrr.t.v 1:'V 1ttcr1:'r.v
1tacrr.t.v 1:'V yvwcrr.V , X&V
the faith
and if also I have all
all
SClence
wcr1:'e: opY)
fLe:B-r.cr1:'O:vr.t.r., &YO:1ty)v DE fL EXW, OUB-EV
but love
not I have, nothing
so that mountains move,
dfLr.
am I.
3 x&V y;wfLtcrw 1t O: V 1:'r.t. 1:'0:. U1tO:PXOV1:'O: fLOU, xr.t.t
And if I distribute all
of me and
the belongings
EO:.V 1tr.t.pr.t.Dw 1:'0 crwfLO: fLoU t V<x

xr.t.uB-crwfLr.t.r.,
if I give up the body of me in order that I may burn,
&YO:1ty)V DE fL EXW, oUDEv wCPe:Aou fLr.t.r. 4 ' H &YO:1ty)
Love
but love
not I have, nothing will I be of use.
fLr.t.xPoB-UfLd, Xpy)cr1:'e:Ue:1:'r.t. r. &YO:1ty) , ou Y)AOL,
is magnaminous, knows how to use love,
not jealous [is], ou cpucrr.OU1:'r.t.r.,
&YO:1ty) OU 1te:p1te:pe:ue:1:'r.t.r.,
love [does] not boast,
[is] not inflated,
5 oux
[does] not
Y)1:'d 1:'0:. er.t.u1:'Yj<;, OU 1tr.t.pouve:1:'r.t.r.,

&crXY)fLOVe:L, ou
act unseemly, [does] not seek things of itself, [is] not provoked
ou
AOyte:1:'r.t.r. 1:'0 x r.t.x 6v ,
does not contemplate
evil,
6 ou
Xr.t.tpe:r. E1tt
[does] not rejoice in
1:'n &Dr.Xt Cf, cruYXr.t.tpe:r. DE 1:'n

&A1JB-dCf'
in [the] truth;
injustice but rejoices
7 1tO:V1:'r.t. cr1:'Eye:r.,
all
it covers,
1tO:V1:'r.t. 1tr.cr1:'e:ue:r., 1tO:V1:'r.t. EA1tte:r., 1tO:V1:'r.t. U1tOfLEVe:r..

all
it believes, all
it hopes, all
it endures.
'
8 H &YO:1ty) OUDE1t01:'e: 1tt1t1:'e:v e:'L't'e: DE 1tpocp1J1:'dr.t.r.,
Love
never
falls off; whether prophecies
xr.t.1:'r.t.pyY)crOV1:'r.t.r. e:t1:'e: y AWcrcrr.t.r., 1tr.t.ucrOV1:'r.t.r. e:t 1:'e:
will be abolished,
whether tongues
will be stopped, whether
9 EX fLEpOU<; yO:.p
yvwcrr.<;, xr.t.1:'r.t.PY1JB-cre:1:' r.t.r..
knowledge will be rendered inoperative. For in part
APPENDIX
ytvwcrXOE:V Xexl EX spoue; 71:pocp'YrC'E:UOE:V .
we know
and in part
we prophesize;
IO fYr::cxV
but whenever
OE: EA&fJ 1"0 1"SAE:LOV , 1"0 EX E:pOUe; xex1"exPYYJ&crE:1"ex.t.

comes the perfection, the from [aJ part will be rendered inoperative.
II G1"E: 'YJv V71:LOe;, EA&AOUV we; V71:LOe;, Ecppovouv
When I was
[aJ child, I spoke
as [aJ child, I thought
we; V71:LOe;, EAOytO'YJv we; V71:LOe; ' G1"E: ysyovex

as [aJ child; when I became
as [aJ child, I reasoned
avp, xex.1"py'YJxex.
1"a 1"OU v'YJ71:Lou. I2 AS71:0E:V
For we look
a man, I rendered inoperative the things of the child.
yap &pn ot'
Ecr071:1"POU EV ex.LvLyex.n, 1"01"E: OE:
now through [a] mirror
in [an] enigma, but then
71:pocrumov 71:pOe; 71:pocrumov ' &pn ytvwcrxw
face
to
ace,
now I know
EX spoue;, 1"01"E: OE: E71:tyvwcroex.t xex.&we; Xex.l
in part,
but then I will know
as
also
E71:E:YVwcr&'YJV.
I was known.
13 VUVl OE: SVE:t 71: Lcrne; , EA71:Le;, aY&71:'YJ,
But now remains faith,
hope,
love,
1"a 1"pLex. 1"ex.U1"ex. dwv OE: 1"OU1"WV aY&71:'YJ .

these three things: but greater than them [is] - love
I 5 ?-9
7 e71:E:t 1" ex. wcp&'YJ
'Iex.xw<.p, d "'C'ex. 1"me; a71:ocr1"OAOLe;

he appeared to James, thus to the apostles
Then
71:iXO"Lv '
all;
8 ecrxex1"OV OE: 71:&V1"WV wcr71:E:pd 1"0

then of all
just as if to a
but last
xaoL. 9 'Eyw y&p dt (; EA&Xtcr1"Oe;

EX1"pwex.n wcp&'YJ
am the least
miscarriage
he appeared also to me. For I
1"WV a71:ocr1"OAWV , oe; oux dl txex.voe; xex.Adcr&ex.t
who not am worthy to be called
of the apostles,
a71:ocr1"OAOe;, Oton EoLwex. 1"V EXXA'YJcrlex.v
because I persecuted the community
apostle,
1"OU &E:OU '
of God.
IS : 20 -28
20 NUVl OE: Xptcr1"Oe;
But now
EyyE:P1"ex.t EX VE:XPWV , a71:ex.px

[the] Messiah has been awoken from [the] dead, initial source
APPENDIX
170
't"WV xe:xm[.L'Y)[.LEvwV .
of those having slept.
21 E1te:t.O yap ot.'

G:v&pW1tOU
For since
through [a] man
&cXV(X.'t"o, x(X.t Ot.'

G:v&pW1tOU
ve:xpwv .
death [came], also through [a] man
resurrection fi'om death.
22 wcr1te:p yap EV 't"i;i 'AOa[.L 1tcXV't"e: G:1to&viJcrxoucrt.V,
For just as
in - Adam all
die
ou't"w x(X.t EV 't"i;i Xpt.cr't"i;i 1tcXv't"e: o1tm'Y)&crov't"(X.t..

so
also in the Messiah all
will be made alive.
23 "Ex(X.cr't"o OE: EV 't"i;i toL 't"cXy[.L(X.'t"(.. G:1t(X.PX
But each
in his own order:
[the] first fi-uit [is]
Xpt.cr't"o, E1te:t.'t"(X. 01.. 't"oi) Xpt.cr't"oi) EV 't"n 1t(X.poucrL

the Messiah, then
those of [the] Messiah in the coming
(x'U't"oi) ,
of him,
24 d't"(X. 't"O 't"EAO, O't"(X.V 1t(X.p(X.ot.001 't"v

then the end,
when he gives
the
(X.crt.Ae:L(X.V 't"i;i &e:i;i x(X.t 1t(X.'t"pL, O't"(X.V x(X.'t"(X.pycrll

kingdom
to God and Father, when he renders inoperative
1tacr(X.v G:PXV x(X.t 1tacr(X.v EoucrL(X.v x(X.t OUV(X.[.Lt.v .
all
rule
and all
authority and power.
25 oe:1 yap
(X.u't"ov (X.crt.Ae:Ue:t.V axpt. 06 &n
For it is necessary [that] he rule
until - he puts
1tcXv't"(X. 't"ou EX&pOU U1tO 't"ou 1too(X. (X.U't"oi).

all
the enemies under the feet
of him.
26 EcrX(X.'t"O EX&pO X (X.'t"(X.pye:1"r(X.t.
0 &cXv(x'''ro '
The last enemy rendered inoperative [is] - death;
27 1tcXv't"(X. yap U1tE't"(X.e:V U1tO 't"OU 1too(X. (X.u't"oi).
for all
he subjects under the feet
of him.
o't"(X.v OE: e:L1tll o't"t. 1tcXv't"(X. U1tO't"E't"(X.X't"(X.t., OAOV o't"t.

But when he says that all
have been subjected, [it is] clear that
EX't"O "roi) U1to't"cX(x'V't"o (x'u't"i;i 't"a 1tcXv't"(X..
to him - all things.
it excepts the one subjecting
28 o't"(X.V OE: U1to't"(X.yn (x'u't"i;i 't"a 1tcXv't"(X.; 't"O"re: x(X.t
But when he will subject to him - all things, then also
(X.U't"O 0 UI.. O U1to't"(X.ycre:'t"(X.t. 't"i;i U1to't"cX(x'V't"(..

himself the son will be subjected to the one subjecting
(x'u't"i;i 't"a 1tcXv't"(X., tv(X.
0 &e:o 1tcXv't"(X. EV 1tacrt.v.
to him
all things, in order that be - God all
in all.
APPENDIX
171
From the Second Letter to the Corinthians

3 : I-3
I 'ApXOfLe:&o:. recXAt-V eo:.UTOU-; O'UVt-O'TcXVet-V ;
Do we begin
again
ourselves
to commend ?
fL
Oh [do] not
xpiJofLev w-; nve-; O'UO'To:.nxWv E7tt, O'TOAWV repo-;

we need
as some of recommendation letters
to
UfLiX-; E ufLwv ;
you or from you?
E7tt, O'TOA fLWV UfLd-; EO'Te,

The letter
of us you
are,
Eyyeypo:.fLfLEV't) EV To:.t: e;; xo:.p8Lo:.t.e;; fLwv , yt.VWO'XOfLEV't)

written
on the hearts
of us, being known
xo:.t G:vayt.vwO'XOfLEV't) ureo mXVTwv G:v&pwrewv,
and being read
by all
men,
3 cpo:.vepoufLevOt. on EO'TE Eret.O'ToA Xpt.O'TOU
manifesting
that you are [the] letter
of [the] Messiah
8t.o:.xov't)&dO'o:. ucp' fLwv , Eyyeypo:.fLfLEV't) OU fLEAo:.Vt.

served
by us,
written
not with ink
G:AA reveufLo:.n &eou WVTOe;; , OUX EV reAo:.tv
but with [the] spirit of God living,
not on tablets
At.&Lvo:.t.e;; G:AA' EV reAo:.tv xo:.p8Lo:.t.e;; O'o:.pxLvo:.t.e;; .
of stone
but on tablets
[of the] heart fleshy.
3 : I2 -I8
12 " ExovTee;; o0v
Therefore
TOt.o:.UT't)V EAreL8o:. reoAA1j

having this sort of hope
great
reo:.pp't)O'Lo:.
xpwfLe&o:.,
freedom in speaking we use,
13 xo:.t OU xo:.&cx.reep MwuO'-Yje;;
and not just as
Moses
ETL&et. xo::AufLtLrl E1tL TO repoO'wreov o:.UTOU, repoe;;

on the face
of him, for
placed [a] veil
TO fL G:Tev LO'o:.t. T01Je;; ULOUe;; 'IO'po:.A de;; TO TEAOe;;
not to stare
the sons of Israel to the end
14 G:AA ErewpwB-'t)
TOU xo:.To:.PYOUfLEVOU.
of that which has been made inoperative. But were hardened
T VOfLo:.To:. o:.UTWV . axpt. yp T-Yje;; O'fLepov fLEpo:.e;;

the thoughts of them. For as far as this very
day
TO o:.lJTO xcXAUfLfLo:. Eret T1j G:vo:.yvwO'et- T-Yje;; reo:.Ao:.t-iXe;;
the old
the same veil
upon - reading
APPENDIX
OllXB-X."YJ'; [.LEVe:l, [.L G:VIXX.IXAU1t-rO[.Le:vov on EV
covenant
remains, not uncovered
since in
15 G:AA' EW'; cr[.Le:pov
Xplcr-r<1l XIX-rlXpye:t-rlXl '
[the] Messiah it is rendered inoperative, but unto today
v Lx.1X av G:VIXYlvwcrKYJ-rlXl MwUcrYj.; X.a:AU[.L[.L1X E1tt -rv

when
is read
Moses
[the] veil on the
x.lXpoLIXV IX1J-rWV x.e:t -r1Xl "
heart
of them lays.
16 "YJVlX.1X OE Eav E1tlcr-rPE"YJ

But when so ever [he] turns
1tpO'; x.upWV , 1te:pWlpe:t-rlXl -rO X.a:AU[.L[.LIX.

toward [the] Lord, is removed
the veil.
17 0 OE x.uPW'; -rO 1tve:U[.La: Ecrnv ' 06 OE -rO 1tVe:U[.L1X
The Lord
the spirit
IS;
where - the spirit
EAe:UB-e:pLIX.
x.upLou,
of [the] Lord [is] , freedom [is] .
18 [.Le:t.; OE 1ta:v-re:.;
But we
all
G:VIXX.e:X.IXAU[.L[.LEV<.p 1tpocrW1t<.p -rv OOIXV x.upLou

uncovered
of face
the glory of [the] Lord
-rv 1X1J-rV dx.ovlX
X.1X-r01t-rPlO[.Le:VQt,
we are reflecting as in a mirror the same image
[.Le:-rIX[.LOpOU[.Le:B-1X G:1tO oO"YJ'; d.; OOIXV, X.1XB-a:1te:p
just as
our being transformed from glory to glory,
G:1tO x.upLou 1tVe:U[.LIX-rO';.
from Lord's
spirit.
S:I6-I7
16 " ncr-re: [.Le:'I.; G:1tO -rou vuv OUOEVIX O'L OIX[.Le:V x.1X-ra
50 that we
now no one we know according to
from -
cra:pX.lX d X.lXt EyVWX.IX[.Le:V x.1X-ra

cra:pX.1X Xplcr-rOV,
[the] flesh; and if we knew
according to [the] flesh [the] Messiah,
EV
G:AAa vuv OUx.En ylvwcrX.O[.Le:v . 17 wcr-re: d n.;
but now no longer we know [him so].
SO that if someone [is] in
XPlcr-r<'.l>, X.lXlV X.-rLcrl'; -ra G:PXIX'IIX 1tlXpYjAB-e:V , toou
[the] Messiah, [a] new creation, the old things have passed away, behold
YEYOVe:V
X.lXlva:.
they have become new.
I2 : I-IO
KIXUXiicrB-lXl Oe:t,
ou crU[.LcpEpOV [.LEV , EAe:UcrO[.LlXl
To boast
is necessary not helpful
though, I will come
173
APPENDIX
2 oLoa:
OE de;; oTC"'C'a:crLa:e;; xa:t &TCOXa:AUe:t.C;; xupLou.

unto visions
and
revelations
tXV&pWTCOV ZV Xpt.cr"'C'(}l
a man
in
I know
of [the] Lord.
TCPO Z"'C'WV oe:xa:n:crcra:pwv ,
[the] Messiah ago
years
fourteen,
- d "'C'e:
-
ZV crw[La:n oux oLoa:, d "'C'e: zX"'C'OC;; "'C'OU crw[La"'C'oe;;

whether in [the] body not I !mow, or
out of the body
oux oLOa:, 6 &e:oc;; oLoe:v , - &'pTCaysv"'C'a

"'C'ov "'C'owU"'C'ov
I know, God lmows, - being seized by force this one
not
3 xaL oLoa: "'C'ov "'C'owu"'C'ov
Ewe;; "'C'pL "'C'ou oupavou.
I know [that] this
And
heaven.
until third
tXV&pWTCOV - d "'C'e: ZV crw[La:n d"'C'e: xwpte;; "'C'ou

man
outside of the
[the] body or
- whether in
crw[La:"'C'oe;; [oux oLoa], 6 &e:oc;; oLoe:v - 4 on pTCa:y't)

that he was seized by force
body
I !mow, - God !mows, not
de;; "'C'ov TCapa:oe:t.crov xat xoucre:v tXpp't)"'C'a p [La"'C'a:,
into -
&.
and
paradise
oux zov
which not
he heard
ineffable
&V&pWTCCj> AaAYjcrat..
are allowed by man
words,
5 UTCEP
to be spoken.
Concerning
"'C'ou "'C'Ot.ou"'C'ou xauxcro[Lat., UTCEP OE

z[Lau"'C'ou
this one
I will boast,
but concerning myself
ou xauxcro[Lat. d [L ZV "'C'a1c;; &cr&e:vda:t.e;; .
wea!messes.
not will I boast
unless In 6 ZO:V yo:p &e:AcrW xauxcracr&at., oux EcrO[La:t. &cppwv ,
not will I be mindless,
For if
I wish
to boast,
de;;
cpdoo[Lat. OE, [L ne;;
&A&e:t,aV YO:P Zpw
for truth
I will speak; but I withhold, lest someone concerning
Z[LE AoyLcr't)"'C'at. UTCEP 0
me
Z Z[Lou
7 xat "'C'Yj
and
fi:om me
'(.va
ASTCe:t. [Le:
beyond that which he sees
reckon
&xoue:t.
me [being] or hears
UTCe:pOAYj "'C'wv &TCOXa:AUe:WV . Ot.o
b y the excesses
of the revelations.
[L uTCe:paLpw[La:t., z06&'t) [LOt. crX6AO "'C'Yj cra:pxL,

I be elevated,
was given t o m e [a] thorn in the flesh,
in order that not
&yye:AOe;; cra"'C'a:vFi.. , '(. va

an angel
Therefore
of Satan,
[Le: xOAacpLfl,
,I
t.va
[L
so that me he might disturb, so that not
8 UTCEP "'C'ou"'C' au "'C'pte;; "'C'ov xupwv

uTCe:pa:Lpw[Lat..
I should not be elevated. For
this
thrice the Lord
APPENDIX
174
9 xex.t dpYJXEV
rcex.pExaAEcrex. tvex. &rcocr'rTI &rc' EfLou.

I beseeched
that it leave
from me.
And he said
fLOt &pxd crm xapt fLou yp DUVex.fLt EV

to me: Enough to you the grace
of me, -
for
&cr&Evd 'rEAd'rex.t. " HDtcr'rex. o0v

weakness
is realized.
power
in
fLaAAov
Most sweet therefore rather
xex.UXcrOfLex.t EV 'rex.1 &cr&Evdex.t, 'L Vex.

I boast
in weaknesses,
so that
will
:7tt.crXrJVwO"n En' E[1. OUVC<LC; 'rOU Xptcr'rou.

should set up tent over me
10 DtO
EUDOXW
of
the power
[the] Messiah.
EV &cr&Evdex.t, EV UPEcrtV, EV
Therefore I am pleased in
weaknesses.
in
injuries,
in
&vayxex.t, EV DtwYfLo1 xex.t cr'rEvoxwpLex.t, urcE:P

necessities,
in
persecutions and
constraints
for
Xptcr'rOU o'rex.v yp &cr&EVW, 'rO'rE DUVex.'rO dfLt.

am I.
[the] Messiah; for whenever I am weak, then powerful
From the Letter to the Galatians

1" : 11-17
II yvwpLw yp UfLtV , &DEAcpoL, 'rO EUex.yyEAt.OV 'rO

For I make known to you, brcthers,
the announcement -
EUC(yye:ALcr&ev un; ' E[1.0U

by
announced
that not
me
according to
is
12 OUDE: yp EYW rcex.p &v&pwrcou
av&pwrcoV
man;
for neither
from
man
rcex.pEAex.OV ex.U'rO OU'rE EDtDax&Yjv, &AAa Dt'

received
it,
nor
was I taught,
but
through
&rcOXex.AUEW 'IYJcrou Xptcr'rOU.
the revelation
ofJesus
13 'HxoUcrex.'rE
For you heard
Messiah.
yp 'rv EfLv &vex.cr'rpocpv rcO'rE EV 'r0 'IouDex.i crfL0,

of
my
on xex.&'
upheaval
one time in
Judaism,
urcEpoAV EDLwxov 'rv EXXAYJcrLex.v 'rOU

I persecuted the community of
that according to excesses
&EOU xex.t ErcOp&ouv ex.u'rv,

God
and
ravaged
it,
14 xex.t rcPOEXOrc'rOV
and
I was advancing
EV 'r0 'IouDex.icrfL0 urcE:P rcoAAou crUVYJAtXtW'rex.

in
Judaism
beyond many
contemporaries
APPENDIX
I7 5
EV -r1) yEVe:t. tJ-0U, 1te:pt.crcrO-rEpW YJAW-r u1tapxWV

in
the kin
-rWV
of me, more fully
zealous
1tCx-rpt.xwv tJ-ou mx.pcx6ocre:WV.
than the fathers
15 " O-re: 68
of me of [the) traditions.
EU60XYJcrEV 6
But when
&cpopLcrcx tJ-E EX xot.ALcx
was pleased
who separated
tJ-YJ-r pO
tJ-ou xcxr. xcxAEcrcx 6t.0:
of [the) mother of me and
whou
being
me fi'om [the) womb
-r Xapt. -ro
called [ me) through the
grace
16 &.1tOXCXAUat. -rOV UlOV CXU-rou EV EtJ-Or., 'f..v a
o f him
t o reveal
the
son
o f him
in
me,
s o that
EuaYYEALwtJ-at.
whov EV -roi: e:-&VEcrt. V, EU-&EW
I announce the good news, him
among the
peoples
right away
ou 1tpocraVE-&E tJ-YJV crapxr. xar. cx'l tJ-an,
not I conferred
with flesh and blood,
17 OU68 &.VA-&OV
did I go up
nor
d 'IEpocroAutJ-cx 1tpO -rou 1tpO EtJ-OU &.1tocr- r OAOU,

to
with
Jerusalem
those
before me
emissaries,
&'AAO: &.1tA-&OV d 'ApaLav , xar. 1taAt.V U1tEcr-rpEa

but
I went away to Arabia
and again
I returned
d i1atJ-acrxov .
Damascus.
to
2 : 1-14
" E1tEt. -rcx 6UX. 6Exa- r Ecrcrapwv E-rWV 1taAt. V &.VEYJV

after fourteen
years again
I went up
Then
d 'IEpocroAutJ-a tJ-E-ro: Bapvaii, crutJ-1tapaACXwv

to
Jerusalem
xar. TL-rOV '

also
with
Barnabas,
bringing along
2 &.VEYJV 68 xcx-ro:
&.1tOXaAut.V ' xar.
and I went up according to [a) revelation;
and
Titus;
O:VE-&EtJ-YJV cxu-ror: -ro EuayyEAt.Ov 0

presented
xYJpucrcrw EV
to them the announcement which I declare
among
-ror: e:-&VEcrt.V , xa-r' 1.6Lav 68 -ror: 60xoucrt.v , tJ- 1tW

the
peoples,
but in private
d XEVOV -rPEXW e:6patJ-ov.

for naught I run
or had run.
to the esteemed,
3 &'AA' OU68
But
lest somehow
TL-ro 6
not even Titus
cruv EtJ-oL, " EAAYJv WV, vayxacr-&YJ 1tEPt.-rtJ-YJ -& vav
with me,
4 6t.0: 68
Greek
being, was forced
to be circumcised;
-rou 1tCXpEt.crax-r ou Eu6a6EAcpou,
but on account of the
intruding
false brothers,
who [was)
APPENDIX
otnve<; 1tcx.pel.cr'ljA,sOV Xcx.'t'cx.crX01t'ljcrcx.l. 't'V eAeu,sepLcx.v
who
entered
to spy out
the
wv v Exoev ev XPl.cr't'<1l
of us
that we have
in
T'lcrou, '[vcx. <;
[the] Messiah Jesus,
xcx.'t'cx.OOUAwcrOUcrl.v
oI<;
they enslave;
so that of us
OUOE:
1tpo<; wpcx.v
to whom not even for
dcx.ev
[a] moment
't'fj tmo't'cx.yfj , LVcx. cXA,sel.cx. 't'ou eucx.yyeALou
did we give in to
subjection,
so that the truth
with
dvcx.L n ,
of the announcement
6 CX1tO OE: 't'wv OOXOUV't'WV
Ol.cx.dv71 1tpo<; O<;.

remain
you.
But from those esteemed
- o1to'IoL 1to't'e crcx.v
something - whatever then
to be
freedom
ouoev Ol. Ol.cx.cpepev
they were nothing to me it matters:
- eot
1tpocrW1tOV [0] ,seo<; cXv,sPW1tOU ou Acx.tXVel.

God
the face
yelp ot
of man
not takes into account - for to me
7 cXAAel
Ooxouv't'e<; OUOE:V 1tpocrcx.vE,sev't'o,
those reputable
but
nothing conferred,
't'ouvcx.v't'Lov l.oov't'e<; on 1te1tLcr't'eucx.l. 't'o eucx.yyEAl.OV

the announcement
the opposite
having seen that I believe in
't''lj<; cXxpoucr't'Lcx.<; xcx.,sw<; TI E't'pO<; 't''lj<; 1tepl.'t'o'lj <;,
just as
o f the foreskin
Peter
of the circumcision,
8 0 yelp evepycrcx.<; TIe't'pcp d<; cX1tOcr't'OAV 't''lj<;

for he
having activated in Peter
for
the mission
of the
9 xcx.t
1tepl.'t'o'lj<; evpyYjcrev xcx.t eot d<; 't'el E,sVYj ,

circumcision
yvov't'e<;
he activated
also in me for
the Gentiles,
and
't'v XtXPl.V 't'v oo,sdcrtXV m, 'I&.xwo<;
having known the
grace
given
to me, James
xcx.t KYjcp<; xcx.t 'IwtXvvYj<;, ot Ooxouv't'e<; cr't'uAm

and
Cephas
and
John,
dvcx.l., Oel.el<;
to be,
who esteemed
pillars
eowxcx.v eot xcx.t Bcx.pvcx.q. XOl.vwvLcx.<;,
[the] right hands they gave to me and
Barnabas
d<; 't'v 1tepl.'t'ov
tVcx. d<; d<; 't'el E,sVYj , cx.u't'ot OE:

so that we
10
for
the Gentiles, but they instead for
the
ovov 't'WV 1t't'wxwv '[Vcx. vYjoveuwev , 0

only
the
poor
that we remember,
ecr1touocx.crcx. cx.U't'O 't'OU't'O 1tm'ljcrcx.l..

I concentrated [this] same thing to make.
of communion,
circumcision;
Xcx.t
which also
II " O't'e OE: A,sev

But when
came
177
APPENDIX
K"1)cpcx d 'AvnOXEr.,r.t.v , xr.t.-ra TCPOcrWTCOV r.t.U-r<;)
Cephas
to
Antioch,
in
face
to him
cXV-rEcr-r"1)V, o-rr., Xr.t.-rEyvwcrEVO v. 12 TCPO -rou

I opposed, because about to be blamed he was. For before the
yap tA&E'IV nvr.t. cXTCO 'Ir.t.xwou E-ra -rwv t&VWV
corning
with
from James
some
the
Gentiles
crUVcr&r.,EV . O-rE OE A&OV , UTCEcr-rEAAEV xr.t.t.

he ate with;
and
but when they carne, he withdrew
cXcpWpr.,EV zr.t.u-rov, CPO01.)EVO -rou EX TCEpr.,-r0'Yj '

separated
himself,
those
fearing
13 xr.t.t. crUVUTCEXpL&"1)crr.t.v r.t.U-r<;)

and
of
[xr.t.l] ot AOVTtOt.
with him also
pretended
circumcision;
the other
' Iouor.t.'Ior." wcr-rE xr.t.t. Br.t.pvr.t.cx crUVr.t.TCX&tJ r.t.u-rWv

Jews,
-rTI
so that also
Barnabas
was split off
from them
14 eXAA' O-rE doov on oux
uTCoxpLcrEr.,.
But
by the hypocrisy.
when
I saw
that not
-rv eXA&EW.V -rou EuaYYEALou,
0p&OTCOOOUcrr.,V TCpO
of the announcement,
truth
did they go rightly according to the
dTCOV -r<;) K"1)cp eTCpocr&EV 1t(Xv-rWV ' d cru 'Iouoa'Io

if you Jew
I said to Cephas in front of
all:
UTCPXWV t&vr.,xw xat. oux 'Iouoa'i xw TI, TCW
being,
Gentiles
and
not
like Jew
live,
how
-ra e&v"1) eXvayxEr., touOa'tEr.,V ;

the Gentiles will you compel to live as Jews?
3 : 10 -14
10 ocror., yap
t epywv Voou LcrLV uno XCl't'O:ptXV
For as many as from works
of law
are,
under curse
ELcrtv yeypcx1t't'cxt. yo:p o'tt e1tt:x.Cl't"&:pCl't'O 7tCl o

are;
for it has been written that: Cursed [be]
each who
oux tEVEr., TCCXcrr., V -r0'I yEypaEvor., EV -r<;) r.,AL

not
dwells
in all
the
things written
-rou voOu '"rot) 1tor.:Yjercxt. cxtrra..

to
of the law
them.
make
II
in
the book
on OE tv VO
But -
by law
ouod or.,xar.,ou-rar., TCapa -r<;) &E<;) O'YjAOV,

no one
is justified
with
God
oLxar.,o EX TCLcr-rEW crE-rar.,

just one
by
faith
shall live;
on
[is] manifest, because the
12 6 OE VOO oux
but the law
not
APPENDIX
ecrnv EX Tt LcrTe:We;; , &AA' 6 TtOt.mxe;; IXIlTa:
is
of
EV IXIlTo!:e;; .
In
but:
faith,
He having made these things will live
I3 XplcrToe;;
them.
'YJ[.Lcxe;; EY)yOPlXcre:V EX
[The] Messiah us
ransomed
from
Te;; xlXTapCXe;; TOU vO[.Lou ye:vo[.Le:voe;; UTtEp [.Lwv

the
curse
of the law
having become for
xlXTapcx, on YSYPIXTtTlXl '

a curse,
as
ETtlXIXTapIXTOe;; TtiXe;;
[be] each
it has been written: Cursed
6 xpe:[.La[.Le:voe;; ETtt UAOU,

-
us
hanging
from [the] wood,
I4 tv cx
de;; TO: e.&vY)
so that to
the peoples the
e:uAoyLIX TOU 'AplXa:[.L YSVY)TCXl EV 'IY)crou XPlcrTiJ),

blessing
t vcx
of
Abraham
may come in
Jesus
Messiah,
TV ETtlXyye:ALIXV TOU TtVe:U[.LCXTOe;; Aaw[.Le:v
s o that the
promise
of the spirit
Ola:
we may receive through
Te;; TtLcrTe:We;; .
faith.
4 : 21-26
2I ASye:TS [.Lot., ot UTtO vO[.Lov '&SAOVTe:e;; dVlXl, TOV
Tell
to me, ones under law
not
to be,
the
22 YSypCXTtTCXl YO:p on 'Apcxa:[.L
VO[.LOV oux &XOUe:Te: ;

law
wanting
For it has been written that Abraham
do you hear?
OUO utoue;; ecrxe:v , EVIX EX Te;; TtlXloLcrxY)e;; XlXt EVIX

rwo
sons
had,
one
the one
one
maidservant
EX Te;; EAe:U'&SplXe;;
the other from the
was born,
Te;; ETtlXyye:ALIXe;; .
through the
and
from the
crapxlX ye:YSVVY)TlXl, 6 OE
according to flesh
Ola:
But
free woman.
XCXTa:
maidservant
23 &A).. ' 6 [[.LEv] EX Te;; TtlXloLcrxY)e;;
EX Te;; EAe:U,&SplXe;; .
from the
from the
24 &n va
Ecrn v &AAY)yopOU[.Le:VIX
These things are
promise.
free woman
being allegorized
lXihlXl ya:p dcrlv OUO OllX.&XCXl, [.LLIX [.LEv &TtO opoue;;

for these
are
rwo
covenants,
one
from Mount
lviX, de;; oouAdlXV ye:VVWcrlX, ne;; EcrTtV 'Ayap.

Sinai,
to
slavery
generating,
which is
Hagar.
25 TO OE 'Aya:p lViX. opoe;; EcrTtV EV T1l 'ApcxLq.,

But Hagar
Sinai
Mount is
in
Arabia;
crUcrTOlXe:L OE T1l vuv 'Ie:poucrIXA[.L, OOUAe:Ue:l ya:p

and corresponds
to
now Jerusalem,
for enslaved
APPENDIX
[.Le:'t"0: 't"wv 't"zxvwv o:1.hYjt;.
with
the
children
179
26 08 &vw 'Ie:pou(j(xA[.L
of her.
But above Jerusalem
E:AcU&ZpCt. E:cn Lv , ' nt; E:IT't"LV [.L rIJ P [.Lwv

free
is,
who
IS
mother
of us.
From the Letter to the Ephesians

I : 9 -IO
9
yvwpLITCt.t;
YJ[.Lt-v 't"0 [.LUIT't"pwv 't"OU &e:A[.LCt.'t"Ot;

the mystery
having made known to us
o:1)'t"OU, XCt.'t"O:
of him,
Ct.u't"ou, v
good thoughts of him,
1tpoz&e:'t"o
which he decided beforehand
10 dt; ol.xovo[.LLCt.v 't"OU 1tAYJpw[.LCt.'t"Ot;
E:V Ct.u't"0
III
't"v e:uooxLCt.v
according to the
of the will
him
for
[the] economy of the fullness
't"wv xCt.t-pwv , G:vCt.xe:CPCt.ACt.t-WITCt.IT&Ct.t- 't"0: mxv't"Ct. E:V 't"0

of' the times,
Xpt-IT't"0, 't"0:
Messiah,
all things in
recapitulating
E:1tL 't"mt; oUpCt.v01t; XCt.L 't"0:
things in
the
heavens
and
the
btL 't"Yjt; yYjt; '
things on
earth
E:V Ct.u't"0
in
him . . .
From the Letter to the Phillipians

2 : 5 -II
5
't"ou't"o cPpove:1't"e: E:V u[.L1v 0

This
you think
in
you
XCt.L E:V Xpt-IT't"0
that [was] also
in
'IYJITOU,
[the] Messiah Jesus,
6 Ot; E:V [.LopcpYj &e:ou u1tapxwv oux &'p1tCt.Y[.Lov

who in
not
[the] form of God existing,
7 &.1..1..0: ECt.U't"OV
yITCt.'t"o 't"0 d VCt.t- tITCt. &e:0,

[to be] reputed
to be
equal to God,
but
e:Xe:VWITe:V [.LOpCPv oouAou ACt.wv ,

emptied
theft [was it]

himself
E:V o[.Lot-w[.LCt.'t"t-
[the] form of [a] slave having taken, in
likeness
eXv&pW1tWV ye:v6(.Le:vot; XCt.L ITX [.LCt.n e:upe:&dt;

of man
having become; and
wt; &v&pW1tOt;
as
a man
[in] figure
discovered
8 E:'t"Ct.1tdVWITe:v ECt.U't"OV ye:v6(.Le:vot;

he lowered
himself
having become
U1tXOOt; (.LzXpt- &Ct.v<X't"ou, &Ct.va't"ou 08 IT't"Ct.upou.

subjected
9
ot-o
until
death,
death
of [the) cross.
XCt.L 0 &e:0t; Ct.U't"Ov U1te:puWITe:v XCt.L E:XCt.pLITCt.'t"o
Therefore even -
God
him
highly exalted
and
granted
APPENDIX
180
,I
(X1J-'C c{) 1:"0 QVtLlX 1:"0 U1tEP 1taV OVtLlX,
10 r.,VIX
E:V 1:"c{)
so that in
every name,
above
to him the name
XlXt
ovtLlXn 'I"Y)crou 1tav yovu xO:tLY;rJ E:1touplXvLwv

every knee
ofJesus
name
may bend of [things] of heaven and
II XlXt 1tacrlX YAwcrcrlX
E:1tr.,ydwv XlXt XIX1:"IXX&ovLwv ,

of earth
and
the
and
below,
each
tongue
E:0tL0AOycr"Y)1:"IXr., on KYPIO IHOY XPITO de;

will confess
that [the] Lord
[is] Jesus
Messiah
in
OOIXV &e:ou 1t1X1:"pOe;.

of God [the] Father.
glory
3 :3 -I4
3 tLe:!: e; Y O: P E:crtLe:v "f)e 1te:pr.,1:"0tL , or.,e
For we
1tve:t)tLlXn &e:ou
'I"f)crou
AIX1:"pe:UOV1:"e:e; XlXt XIXUXWtLe:vor., E:V Xpr.,cr1:"c{)

and
serving
boasting
in
[the] Messiah Jesus

,I
4 XIXL1te:p E:YW e:xwv
XlXt oux E:V crlXPXt 1te:1tor.,&01:"e:e;,

and
not
in
though
[the] flesh convinced,
1te:1toL&"y)crr.,V XlXt E:V crlXpxL. E'L ne;

conviction
also
flesh.
in
If
flesh,
OX1:"IX tLe:pOe;,
ooxe:!: rlAAoe;
circumcision
E:X yvoue; 'IcrplXA, cpUA1je; Be:v r.,lXtLLv ,
e EpIXLOe; E: e EpIXLwv, XIX1:"tX

6
of
XIX1:"tX
another
1te:pr.,1:"otLYJ
more:
[on the] eighth day, from [the] kin of Israel,

Hebrew
having
someone thinks
1te:1tor.,&VIXr., E:V crlXpxL, E:YW tLaAAov

to be convinced in
of God
the circumcision, the ones i n spirit
are
Hebrews,
tribe
of Benjamin
v0tL0v <l>lXpr.,crIXLoe;,
according to [the] law [a] Pharisee,
1jAOe; or.,wxwv 1:"V E:xxA"Y)crLIXV, XIX1:"tX

persecuting the
according to zeal
community,
according to
Or.,XIXWcrUV"y)V 1:"V E:V v0tL<P ye:v0tLe:voe; rltLe:tL1t1:"Oe;.

that
justice,
in
[the] law having become blameless.
7 &AArf. &nvlX v tL0r., xpO"Y), 1:"IXU1:"1X y"Y)tLlXr., Or.,tX

But
whatever was to me [as] gain, these
8 &AAtX tLe:vouv ye: XlXt youtLlXr.,
1:"OV Xpr.,cr1:"OV "Y) tLLlXv .

the
Messiah
But
[as] loss.
1tO:V1:"1X "Y)tLLIXV dvlXr., Or.,tX

all things loss
Xpr.,cr1:"OU
to be
[I] thought through
certainly
the
I think through
1:"0 U1te:pxov 1:"1je; yvwcre:we;
on account of the superiority
'I"Y)crou 1:"OU xupLou tL0u, Or.,'
of [the] Messiah Jesus
also
Lord
of the knowledge
QV
1:"tX 1tO:V1:"1X
of me, through whom all
things
181
APPENDIX
E{Yl fJJ. w-S'Y)V , xext yOU!-,-ext.
o"XUexACX '(.vcx
Xpt.o"TOV
I esteemed lost, and I think through excrement in order that [the] Messiah
Xe:PDO"W
I may earn
xcxt e:upe:-Sw EV CX1J-rc{), !-'- EXWV E!-,-V
and
be found in
not having my
him,
Dt.XCXt.OO"UV'Y)V TV EX v6!-,-ou, &AA TV
Dt.
rdO"Te:wc;
justice, [be]
that
Xpt.O"TOU,
TV EX -Se:OU Dt.xext.O O"uv'Y)v bet Tji 1to"Te:t.,
o f [the] Messiah, the
from law,
but
the one through faith

upon the faith,
justice
from God
TOU yvwvcxt. CXUTOV xcxt TV DUVCX!-'-t.V T'ljC;
10
for
knowing him
of the
power
the
and
&'VCXO"TcX.O"e:WC; CXUTOU xcxt XOt.VWVCXV

resurrection
of him
and
communion [of the]
1tCX!-,-cX.TWV CXUTOU, O"u!-,-!-,-opcpt.6!-,-e:voc; Tc{) -SCXVcX.T

sufferings
CXUTOU,
of him,
II d 1tWC;
if
of him,
the death
XCXTCXVTo"W dc; TV ECXVcX.o"TCXO"t.V
somehow I will end up
TV EX ve:xpwv.
of
sharing form with

at
the
resurrection
I2 OuX on D'Y) EACXOV D'Y)

Not
[the] dead.
that already I seized
or already
Te:Te:Adw!-,-cxt., Dt.WXW DE: d xcxt XCXTCXAcX.W, ecp' <1i xcxt

have completed, but I seek since
also I seize hold
for which also
I3 &De:ACPO,
XCXTe:A!-,-CP-S'Y)V U1tO Xpt.o"TOU 'I'Y)O"ou.
Brothers,
[the] Messiah Jesus.
I was seized hold of by
EyW E!-'-CXUTOV OU1tW AoyO!-,-cxt. xcxTe:t.A'Y)cpEvcxt. EV DE,

I
myself
!-,-Ev
not
reckon
to have been seized; but one thing:
01to"w E1tt.AcxvB-cxv6!-,-e:voc;
things on one hand [that are] behind
being forgotten,
E!-'-1tpOO"-Se:v E1te:XTe:t.v6!-'-e:voc;,
TOLC; DE:
towards the things that on the other hand are before me,
I extend,
I4 XCXT O"X01tOV Dt.WXW d c; TO pcxdov

toward [the] goal I pursue to
T'ljC; avw
the prize
XAO"e:WC; TOU -Se:OU EV Xpt.o"Tc{)
of the from above calling
of
God
in
'I'Y)O"ou.
[the] Messiah Jesus.
From the First Letter to the Thessalonians

I:3 --5
3 !-'-V'Y)!-'-OVe:UOVTe:C; U!-'-WV TOU EPYOU T'ljC; 1to"Te:WC;
Remembering
of you the
work
of
faith
APPENDIX
182
x(xl 't'OU x61tou 't'Yj ay6:1tYJ xat 't'Yj U1tOtLVYj

and
and
love
of
of the toil
patience
the
't'Yj EA1t lOO 't'OU xuplou tLC;lV 'IYJO'ou XpLO''t'OU

of us
of the Lord
hope
of
Messiah
Jesus
4 d06't'E,
EtL1tPO'&EV 't'OU &EOU xat 1ta't'po tLwv ,

and
God
before
Knowing,
[the] Father of us.
aOEAcpot ya1tYJtLEVOL U1tO ['t'OU] &EOU, 't'V EXAOYV

by
beloved
brothers
election
the
God,
utLWV ,
on 't'o EuaYYEALoV tLwv oux EYEV&YJ
of you,
that the announcement of us
not
generated
d utLii EV A6Yb? tL6vov , aAAa xat EV OUVcX.tLEL

you
in
but
only,
word
in
in
also
power
xat EV 1tVd) tLan aylb? xat 1tAYJpocpopla 1tOAAYj,

1Il
and
in fullness,
transported
EyEV&YJtLEV EV
xa&w otoa't'E oIm

just as
and
holy
spirit
you know what sort we became
utL1v OL' utLii.

for you.
among you
4 : I3 -17
I3 Ou &EA0tLEV OE: utLii ayvodv,

But we do not want
you
aOEAcpol, 1tEpt
to be ignorant, brothers,
XOLtLWtLEVWV, rva tL AU1tYjO'&E

who fdl asleep,
xa&w xat ot AOL1tOt
so that not you become saddened just as
ot tL EXOV't'E EA1tloa.
ones not having
't'WV
concerning those
also
the others
I4 d yap 1tLO''t'EU0tLEV on
For if
hope.
we believe
that
'IYJO'ou &'1tE&aVEV xat aVEO''t'YJ , OU't'W xat 6 &EO

Jesus
died
and
rose,
't'ou XOLtLYJ&Ev't'a OLa

those asleep
thus
also
't'OU 'IYJO'ou &EL
through -
Jesus
to you we speak
in
God
O'UV au't'0.
will lead with him.
I5 Tou't'o yap utL1v AEY0tLEV EV A6Yb?

For this
xuplou,
[the] word of [the] Lord,
on tLd ot WV't'E ot 1tEPLAEL1t0tLEVOL d 't'V

that we
the living
who are remaining
In
the
1tapouO'lav 't'OU xup lou ou tL cp&cX.O'WtLEV 't'ou

coming
of the Lord
XmtLYJ&EV't'a .
asleep;
EV CPWv1j
in
not do
we come to be those
I6 on au't'o 6 XUpLO EV XEAEuO'tLan,

since himself the Lord
in
[aJ word of command,
apxaYYEAOU xat EV O'cX.A1tLyyL &EOU,
[the] voice of [an] archangel and
in
[aJ trumpet
of God,
APPENDIX
cX1t ' OUPG(VOU, XG(l OL VEXPOl EV
shall come down
Xpt.. crT0
from heaven,
and
the dead
cXvacrTcrovTat.. 1tpw'rov ,
17
E1tEt.. T a (.Ld<;;
thereupon we
first,
[the] Messiah shall rise up
in
OL WVTE<;; OL 1tSpt.. AEm6(.LEvQ(.. &(.La cruv aUTm<;;

the living
along with them
who remain
ap1taY1)cr6(.LE&G( EV V EcpEAG(t.. <;; d<;; cX.miVT1)crt.. V TOU

will be snatched up
[the] clouds for
in
encountering
the
xupLou d<;; cX.EpG( xal OUTW<;; mxvTOTE cruv xupLcp

Lord
in
with [the] Lord
always
thus
[the] air; and
Ecr6(.LE&G(.
we will be.
S : I-3
I I1Epl OE:
TWV xp6vwv xal TWV xG(t.. p wv , &'OEAcpoL,
But concerning the
times
ou xpdav EXETE
not need
and
the
moments, brothers,
for yourselves
cX.Xpt.. W<;; oLOaTE OTt.. (.LEpa xupLou

exactly
1<;; XAE1tT1)<;;
you know that [the] day of [the] Lord as
EV VUXTl
in
2 aUTOl ycX.p
U(.Lt.. V ypcXc.pEcr&at..
do you have in you to be written;
OUTW<;; EpXETat.. .
[the] night thus
it comes.
OTav
thief
AEywcrt..V ' Et.. P1)V1)
Whenever they will say: Peace
xal cXcrCPcXAEW, T6TE ac.pvLo(..Q <;; aUToL<;; Ec.pLcrTG(Tat..

and
then
security,
suddenly
OAE&pO<;; wcr1tEp WOlV T?j

destruction just as
for them comes
EV yacrTpl EXOUcr7), XG(l
the labour to her in
womb
having,
and
OU (.L EXc.pUyWcrt..v .
not -
will they escape.
From the Second Letter to the Thessalonians

2 :3 -1I
3
(.L Tt.. <;;
u(.LiX<;; Ea1taTcr7) xaTcX. (.L1)OEVG( Tp61tov '
Not someone you
OTt..
will deceive
in
any
way!
EcX.V (.L EA&7) cX.1t 0 crTacr La 1tPWTOV
For [it will not be] unless
comes the apostasy
first
xal cX.1tOXaAuc.p&?j 0 eXv&pW1to<;; T-1j<;; cX.VO (.LLa<;; , 0 ULO<;;

and was revealed
the man
of
lawlessness, the son
APPENDIX
184
-r1j<; G:nwAdcx<;,
4 6
of destruction,
G:vnXd[LEvo<; xcxL unEpcxe.p6[LEVO<;
the one opposing
and
exalting
AEy6[LEVOV &EOV crEcxcr[La,
EnL neXv-ra
above all those things called
God
or object of worship,
wcr-rE au-rov d<; -rOV vaov -rou &EOU xa&i,crae.,

so as
for h i m in
the
temple of
God
t o sit,
G:noOEe.XVUV-ra Eau-rov on Ecrnv &E6<;.

demonstrating
himself
that he is
5 Ou
God.
Not
[LV'YJ[L0VEUE-rE on En wv npo<; u[LiX<; -rau-ra

do you remember that still being with
6 xaL vuv -ro
u[Le.v ;
to you?
you
EAEYov
these things I said
xa-rEXov otoa-rE,
d<; -ro
And now the one withholding all of you know, for
G:noxaAu<p&1jvae. au-rov EV -rc{) au-rou xae.pc{).

himself in
being revealed
7 -ro yap [Lucr-rp c,ov o'YJ

For the
mystery
[L6vov 6
only
his
moment.
EVEPYE1 -rae. -r1j<; G:vo[Li,a<;
already works
of
lawlessness;
xa-rEXwv apn EW<; EX . [LEcrOU yEv'YJ-rae..
the o n e restraining
now
until from the middle h e becomes [removed] .
8 xaL -r6-rE G:noxaAucp&crE-rae. 6 avo[Lo<;, OV

And then
['I'YJcrou<;] G:VEAe:L
Jesus
the lawless,
will be revealed
-rc{)
nVEu[Lan -rou cr-r6[Lcx-r0<;
will abolish with the breath
au-rou xaL xa-rapycrEe.

of him
Ene.<pavd -r1j<;
-rTI
03
of him,
coming
xa-r'
of the mouth
EcrnV napoucri,a
of which [the impious] is
the presence
EvEpYEe.av -rou cra-raviX EV neXcrn OUVeX[LEe. xaL
according to [the] working of
Satan
in
cr'YJ[Ldoe.<; xaL -rEpacre.v EUOOU<;

signs
of the
and will render inoperative with the appearance
napoucri,a<; au-rou,
6 xupc,oC;;
whom the Lord
and
prodigies
every
power
and [in]
10 xaL EV neXcrn
of falsehood
and
wirh every
G:neX-rn G:oe.xi,a<; -r01<; G:noAAu[LEVOL<;, G:V&' V -rv

trick
of injustice to those being destroyed,
G:YeXn'YJv -r1j<; G:A'YJ&da<; oux EOE;av-ro

love
of
truth
crw&1jvae. au-rou<;.
being saved them.
not
because of the
d<; -ro
did they accept for
II xaL Oe.a -rou-ro nE[LnEe. au-r01<;

And for
this
sends
to them
APPENDIX
6 -l1EO EVEPYEWV 7tAO:V'YJ
God
power
d 1:'0 1tt.cr1:'EUcrex.t. ex.U1:'OU
of miscarriage to
the believing
them
1:'i;) Y;EUOEt.
In
falsehood . . .
From the Letter to Philemon

1 : 15-16
15 1:'O:xex. yap Ot.a
For perhaps
1:'OU1:'O ExwpLcr-l1'YJ
because of this
16 OUXE"t't. w OOUAOV
wpex.v , '{vex. ex.Wvt.OV ex.U1:'OV &.7tExn,

[a] time, until eternally
him
7tpO
he was separated [from you] for

you may have,
no longer as
slave
&'AAa U7tE:P OOUAOV , &'OEACPOV &'yex.7t'YJ1:'OV , f.LO:At.cr1:'ex. Ef.LoL,

but
super- slave,
7tocr<Jl OE:
[a] brother beloved,
certainly
to me,
f.LiXAAOV cro/' xex./' EV crex.px/' xex./' EV xupL<Jl.
but by how much more
to you it be in
flesh
than In
[the] Lord.
References
Translator's note. The bibliography contains works cited in the text in

addition to those significant works referenced by Agamben. In the case
of works not originally published in English, translations were consult
ed and occasionally modified. Page references refer to works as they are
listed here.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1974. Minima Moralia: Rejlections from Damaged
Life. Trans. E. F. N . Jephcott. London: Verso. Originally published as
Minima Moralia: Rejlexionen aus dem beschiidigten Leben (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 1951) .
Augustine. 1997. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. R. P. H. Green. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Aristeas. 1951. Letter ofAristeas. Ed. and trans. Moses Hadas. New York:
Harper.
Badiou, Alain. 1997. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism.
Translated by Ray Brassier. Stanford, Calif : Stanford University Press,
2003. Originally published as Saint Paul: La Fondation de l'universal
isme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) .
Barth, Karl. 1954. Der Romerbrief 9 th ed. Zollikon-Zurich:
Evangelischer Verlag.
Bartolo of Sassoferrato. 1555. Tractatus minoricarum. In Opera. Lugduni:
Blasius.
Benjamin, Walter. 1966. Briefe. Ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W.
Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Translated by Manfred R.
188
References
Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson as The Correspondence of Walter

Benjamin, I9IO-I940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) .
. 1974-89. "Uber den BegrifF der Geschichte." In Gesammelte
Schriften, vol. 1, pt. 2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Herbert
Schweppenhauser. Translated by Harry Zohn as "Theses on the
Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, ed. and intro. Hannah
Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968) .
. 1999a. The Arcades Project. Ed. and intro. Hannah Arendt.
Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. German edition, Gesammelte Schriften, vol.
5, pt. 1, Passagenwerk, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1982) .
. 1999b. Selected Writings. Vol. 2 , 1927-1934. Ed. Michael W
Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith. Trans . Rodney
Livingstone et al. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press.
German edition, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, pt. 1, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann and Herbert Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1974-89)
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics. Trans. Mary
Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press. Originally
published as Problemes de linguistique generale (Paris: Gallimard,
1966) .
. 1973. Indo-European Language and Society. Trans. Elizabeth
Palmer. Coral Gables: University of Florida Press, 1973 . Originally
published as Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeennes (Paris:
Editions de Minuit, 1969) .
Bernays, Jacob. 1996. Jacob Bernays, un philologue juif Ed. John Glucker
and Andre Lask. Villeneuve: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
Blanchot, Maurice. 1969 . The Infinite Conversation. Translated by Susan
Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 199 3 .
Originally published as L'Entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard) .
Buber, Martin. 1994. Two Types ofFaith, with a paper by David Flusser.
Translated by N. P. Goldhawk. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University
Press, 1973 . Originally published as Zwei Glaubensweisen. Afterword
by David Flusser (Gerlingen: Schneider).
Bultmann, Rudolf 1960. Glauben und Versteben: Gesammelte Aufiatze.
Vol. 3 . Tiibingen: Mohr.
Calderone, Salvatore. 1964. Pistis-Fides: Ricerche di storia e diritto inter
nazionale nell'antichita. Messina: Universita degli Studio
References
Canello, Ugo A , ed. 1883. La vita e Ie opere del trovatore Arnaldo
Daniello. Halle: Niemeyer. Redited by Rene Lavaud as Les Poesies
d'Arnaut Daniel (Toulouse: Privat, 19IO; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1973 ) .
Carchia, Gianni. 2000. L'a more del pensiero. Macerata: Quodlibet.
Casanova, Paul. 19II. Mohammed et la fin du monde. Paris: Geuthner.
Chrysosrom, John. 2002. On the Incomprehensible Nature ofGod. Trans.
Paul W Harkins. Fathers of the Church, vol. 72. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press. French edition, Sur l'incom
prehensibilite de Dieu, vol. I of Homelies, vols. 1-5 , ed. Anne-Marie
Malingrey (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1970) .
Cohen, Boaz. 1966. Jewish and Roman Law: A Comparative Study. New
York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Coppens, Joseph. 1968. Le Messianisme royal, ses origins, son developpe
ment, son accomplissement. Paris: Editions du Cerf.
Davies, William David. 1958. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic
Elements in Pauline Theology. 2nd ed. , with additional notes. London:
S.P. C.K.
Deissmann, Gustav Adolf: 1923 . Licht vom Osten: Das Neue Testament
und die neuentdeckten Texte del' hellenistish-romischen Welt. 4th ed.
Ttibingen: Mohr.
Derrida, Jacques. 1973 . Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on
Husserl's Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press. Originally published as La Voix et Ie
phenomene: Introduction au probleme du signe dans la phenomenologie

de Husserl (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967) .
1982. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. Originally published as Marges de la
philosophie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972) .
Dessau, Hermann. 19IO. "Der Name des Apostels Paulus. " Hermes 45 .
Durling, Robert, and Ronald L. Martinez. 1990. Time and the Crystal:
Studies in Dante's ''Rime Petrose. " Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Foucault, Michel. I993. ''About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of
the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth." Political Theory 2I, no. 2
(May) : I98-227.
. I994. Dits et ecrits, I954-I988. Vol. 3, I976-79. Ed. Daniel
Defert and Frans;ois Ewald. Paris: Gallimard.
---. 1999. Religion and Culture. Ed. Jeremy R. Carette. New York:
Routledge.
. 2001 . Fearless Speech. Sel. and ed. Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles:
References
Semiotexte.
Frankel, Eduard. 1916. "Zur Geschichte des Wortes 'fides.'" Rheinisches
Museum 71.
Genesis Rabbah. 1985. Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the
Book of Genesis. Ed. Jacob Neusner. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Guillaume, Gustave. 1970. Temps et verbe: Theorie des aspects, des modes,
et des temps. Suivi de l'architectonique du temps dans les langues clas

siques. Paris: Champion.
Harrer, Gustave Adolphus. 1940. "Saul Who Also Is Called Paul. "
Harvard Theological Review 3 3 .
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1969. Science of Logic. Trans. A . V.
Miller. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International.
Originally published as Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Eva Moldenhauer
and Karl Markus Michel, vol. 5 of Werke in zwanzig Biinden
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971) .
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row. Originally published
as Sein und Zeit (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1972) .
. 199 5. Einleitung in die Phanomenologie der Religion. Ed.
Matthias Jung. Vol. 60, pt. I, of Gesam tausga be. Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann.
Hengel, Martin. 1991. The Pre-Christian Paul. Trans. John Bowden
Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Originally published as
"Der vorchristliche Paulus," in Paulus und das antike Judentum, ed.
Martin Hengel and Ulrich Heckel (Tubingen: Mohr, 1992) .
Huby, Joseph, ed. 1957. Saint Paul, Epttre aux Romains. Notes by
Stanislas Lyonnet. Paris: Beauchesne.
Jungel, Eberhard. 1983. God as the Mystery ofthe World Trans. Darrell L.
Guder. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Originally published as Gott als Geheimnis der Welt: Zur Begriindung
der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und

Atheismus (Tubingen: Mohr, 1978) .
Justinian. 1998. The Digest ofJustinian. Bilingual edition. Ed. and trans.
Alan Watson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kafka, Franz. 1966 [1953] . Hochzeitsvorbereitung auf dem Lande und
andere Prosa aus dem Nachlass. Vol. 8 of Gesammelte Werke. Ed. Max
Brod. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
Kant, Immanuel. 1996. Religion and Rational Theology. Trans. and ed.
Allen W. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press. Originally
published as Das Ende aller Dinge, in Akademie- Textausgabe, vol. 8,
References
Abhandlungen nach I78I (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968).
Kojeve, Alexandre. 1952. "Les Romans de la sagesse." Critique 60.
Koyre, Alexandre. 1935. "Hegel a Jena. " Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie
Religieuse 26.
Lambertini, Roberto. 1990. Apologia e crescita dell'identita ftancescana
(1255-I279). Rome: Istituto Storieo del Medio Evo.
Lambertz, Moritz. 1906-8. " Die griechische Sklavennamen. "
Jahresbericht iiber das Staatsgymnasium im VIII Bezirk Wiens 57-58.
. 1914. "Zur Ausbreitung der Supernomen oder Signum . "
Glotta 5 .
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. 1991. ''Nathan the Wise, " "Minna von
Barnhelm, " and Other Plays and Writings. Ed. Peter Demetz. New
York: Continuum. Published as Theologiekritische Schriften I und 2,
ed. Helmut Gobel, vol. 7 of Werke, 8 vols. , ed. Herbert G. Gopfert
(Munich: Carl Hanser, 1976) .
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1987. Introduction to the Works of Marcel Mauss.
Trans. Felicity Baker. London: Routledge. Originally published as
"Introduction a l' oeuvre de Marcel Mauss," Sociologie et anthropologie
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957) .
Lote, Georges. 1949. Histoire du vers ftanrais. Vol. 1. Paris: Boivin et
Companie.
Manganelli, Giorgio. 1996. La notte. Milan: Adelphi.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1975-. Collected "WOrks. London:
Lawrence and Wishart. German edition, vols. 1-4 of Werke, 45 vols.
(Berlin: Dietz, 1977) .
Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in
Archaic Societies. Trans. W. D. Halls. London: Routledge. Originally
published as "Essai sur Ie don," Sociologie et Anthropologie (1950) .
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1990. The Anti-Christ. Trans. and intro.
H. L. Mencken. Tuscon: See Sharp Press. Published as Der Antichrist,
vol. 2 of Werke in Drei Banden, 3 vols. , ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich:
Carl Hanser, 1955) .
Norden, Eduard. 1898. Die antike Kunstprosa: yom VI jahrhundert v.
Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner.
Origen. 1989. Commentary on the Gospel According to john, Books I-IO.
Trans. Ronald E. Heine. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press. Also edited by Theresia Heither as Commentaire sur
Saint jean, vol. I of 4 (Freiburg: Herder, 1996) , and by Cecile Blanc
as Commentaire sur saint jean, 1.' Livres I) (Paris: Editions du Cerf:
1996) .
References
. 2001. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books I-5.
Trans. Thomas P. Scheck. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press.
. 2002. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6-IO.
Trans. Thomas P. Scheck. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press.
Philo of Alexandria. 1984. Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin. Vol. 3. Ed.
Charles Mercier. Paris: Editions du Cerf.
Ranciere, Jacques. 1999. Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans.
Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Originally
published as La Mesentente: Politique et philosophie (Paris: Galilee,
1995)
Rosenzweig, Franz. 1970. The Star of Redemption. Trans. William W.
Hallo. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Originally published
as Stern der Erlosung (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981) .
Riistow, Alexander. 1960. "Entos ymon estin: Zur Deutung von Lukas
17:20-21. " ZeitschriJtfor die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 51.
Schmitt, Carl. 1974. Der Nomos der Erde im Volkerrecht desJus Publicum
Europaeum. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot.
1985. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of
Sovereignty. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. Originally published as
Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveranitat

(Munich: Duncker and Humboldt, 1922) .
Scholem, Gershom. 1965. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Trans.
Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken Books. German edition, Zur
Kabbalah und ihrer Symbolik (Zurich: Rhein Verlag, 1980) .
---. 1971. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish
Spirituality. New York: Schocken Books. German edition, in Judaica,
vol. I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963 ) .
. 1995 . Gershom Scholem Zwischen die Disziplinen. Ed. Peter
Schafer and Gary Smith. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1963 . Samtliche Werke. Vol. 4. Ed. Hans
Wolfgang Friedrich von Lohneysen. Frankfurt am Main: Cotta-Insel
Verlag.
Shapiro, Marianne. 1980. Hieroglyph of Time: The Petrarchan Sestina.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Strobel, August. 1961. Untersuchungen zum eschatologischen
Verzogerungsproblem, auf Grund der spatjudisch-urchristlichen

Geschichte von Habakuk 2 . 2ff. Leiden: Brill.
References
193
Taubes, Jacob. 2003 . The Political Theology of Paul Trans. Dana

Hollander. Stanford, Cali: : Stanford University Press. Originally
published as Die politische Theologie des Paulus, ed. Aleida Assmann
and Jan Assmann (Munich: Fink, 1993).
Thomas, Yan. 199 5. "Fictio legis: LEmpire de la fiction romaine et ses
limites medievales." Droit 21.
Ticonius. 1989. The Book of Rules. Bilingual edition. Ed. and trans.
William S. Babcock. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Tomson, Peter. 1990. Paul and the Jewish Law. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
Vaihinger, Hans. 1965 . The Philosophy of './1s If': A System of the
Theoretical, Practical, and Religious Fictions of Mankind. 2nd ed.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Originally published as Die
Philosophie der Als Ob: System der theoretischen, praktischen und

religiosen Fiktionen der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen
Positivism us. Mit einem Anhang uber Kant und Nietzsche (Berlin:
Reuther und Reithard, 191I) .
Watson, Alan. 1996. Jesus and the Law. Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
. 1998 . Ancient Law and Modern Understanding. Athens:
University of Georgia Press.
Weber, Max. 2002. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ofCapitalism. Ed. ,
trans., and intro. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells. New York:
Penguin Books . Published as Die protestantische Ethik: Eine
Aufsatzsammlung, 8th ed. , ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Gutersloh:
Gutersloher Verlaghaus, 1991) .
Whor: Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected
Writings. Ed. John B . Carroll. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.
Wilamovitz-Mollendorf: Ulrich von. 1907. "Die griechische Literatur
des Altertums." In Die griechische und lateinische Literatur und
Sprache, 2nd ed. , ed. Ulrich von Wilamovitz-Mollendorfet al. Berlin
Leipzig: Teubner.
Wilcke, Hans-Alwin. 1967. Das Problem eines messianischen
Zwischenreichs bei Paulus. Zurich: Zwingli Verlag.
Wilhelm, James J. 1982. II Miglior Fabbro: The Cult of the Difficult in
Daniel, Dante, and Pound. Orono: National Poetry Foundation,
University of Maine.
Wolbert, Werner. 1981. Ethische Argumentation und Paranese in I Kor 1.
Dusseldorf: Patmos Verlag.
Index of Names
Abraham,9,53,91,93, lI8,121f:
151-53,158,178
Adorno,Theodor Wiesengrund,35,
37ft'
Aland, Kurt, 6, 16
Alighieri,Dante,83
Amery,Jean,38f
Amos,54
Antelme,Robert,53
Arendt, Hannah, 143
Aristeas,44
Aristo,15
Aristotle,4,65,102,128,136
Auerbach,Erich,74
Augustine,II,72,84f, 123
Austin,John Langshaw,131f
Avicenna,38
Badiou,Alain, 52
Bally, Chrles, 102
Barth, Karl, 35, 41
Bartolus of Saxoferrato, 27
Bataille, Georges,124
Baudelaire,Charles, 61
Ben-Engeli, Cid Hamet, 8
Benjamin,Walter,3f: 7,II, 30,33,
35-39, 42, 45,49,53,56,71,74f,
138-145
Benveniste,Emile,65f; II4f, II7,lI9,
127f; 132
Bergamin,Jose,57
Bernays,Jacob,I
Blanchot,Maurice,53
Blumenberg, Hans,63
Bonhoeffer,Dietrich,42
Brentano,22
Buber,Martin,2,II3,124ft'
Bultmann, Rudolf, 72
Burckhardt,Jacob,60
Calderone,Salvatore,127
Carchia, Gianni, 62
Cassanova,Paul,71
Cervantes Saavedra,Miguel de,8
Chorin,Ben,2
Chrysostom,John,92,96,98f
Clareno,Angelo,27
Cohen, Boaz,14
Constantine,126
Coppens,Joseph,17
Cyril of Alexandria,92
Daniel,Arnaut,79ff
Davies,W illiam David,2
Deissman, Gustav Adolf, 144
Deleuze, Gilles,57
Derrida,Jacques,102f
Dessau,Hermann,8
Didymus the Blind,92
Dionysius of Halicarnassus,29f
Index ofNames
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 39
Durling, Robert, 83
Elijah, 53
Erasmus of Rotterdam, 9
Estienne, Henri, 95
Euripides, 96
Eusebius of Caesarea, 72, 126
Ezra, 25
Flaubert, Gustave, 37. See Josephus,
Flavius
Flusser, David, II3, 124f
Forberg, Friedrich Carl, 36, 41
Foucault, Michel, 57f: 60, I33f
Francis of Assisi, 27
Frankel, Eduard, 1I5
Freud, Sigmund, 41
Gamaliel, 8
Gaultier, Jules de, 37
Gongora y Argote, Luis de, 4
Guillaume, Gustave, 65f
Guillaume de Lorris, 8
Hadot, Pierre, 92
Hagar, 122, 192
Haggai, 6I
Harrer, Gustave Adolphus, 8
Hegel, Georg W ilhelm Friedrich, 29f:
32, 76, 99-103
Heidegger, Martin, 4, 33f: 75, 88, 143
Hengel, Martin, 7
Herod Atticus, II
Hillel the Elder, 14, 76
Hippocrates, 68f
Hobbes, Thomas, no
Holderlin, Friedrich, 38, 87
Homer, II4
Honorius of Autun, 83
Hort, Fenton John Anthony, 6
Hosea, 50
Huby, Joseph, 17
Ibn Ezra, Moshe, 5
Isaiah, tide page, 45, 48, 54
Jacob, 54, 117, 163

James, 125, 169, 176, 177
Jakobson, Roman, IOIf
Jean de Meun, 8
Jeremiah, 60
Jerome, 6, II, 19, 22, 44, 48, 72, 74,
85, 87f: 96, I07, no, 121, 130, 140
Joachim of Flora, 72
John, 16f: I09, III, 125, 176
Josephus, Flavius, 4
Jousse, Marcel, 3
Jlingel, Eberhard, 42
Justinian, 13ft'
Kafka, Franz, 5, 42f: 46, 56, 71, I08,
123
Kant, Immanuel, 35f: 70, 88
Kierkegaard, S0ren, 75
Kojeve, Alexandre, IOI
Koyre, Alexandre, IOI
Kraus, Karl, 139
Kuhlmann, Georg, 32
Laban, II7
Labeo, I5
Lambertini, Roberto, 27
Lambertz, Moritz, IO
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 39, 75
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, IZ4ft'
Levi-Strauss, Claude, I02
Lowith, Karl, 63
Lote, Georges, 84
Lukacs, Gyorgy, 33
Luke, IZ, 73, IZ6
Luther, Martin, 20ff, 26, 42, 99,
140-144
Malachi, 6I
Manganelli, Giorgio, 70
Mark, 3, 42, 125
Martinez, Ronald L., 83
Marx, Karl, 29 passim, 57: 73, 76
Matthew, 3, 42f
Mauss, Marcel, IZ3f
Meillet, Antoine, 65, 127
Index ofNames
Meir, Rabbi, 89
Merx, Adalbert, 2If
Meyer, W ilhelm, 84
Micah, 54
Michelstadter, Carlo, 9I
Morike, Eduard, 4
Moses, 72, 93f; I08, II7, I54, I59, 167,
17I, 172
Moshe ibn Ezra, 5
Nathan of Gaza, I44
Nestle, Eberhard, 6
Nestle, Erwin,6, I6
Nicholas of Cusa, 5I
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, 37, 60, 75,
mf
Norden, Eduard, 5, 83fT
Olivi, Pierre Jean, 27
Origen, 9, I7, 75, 89, 92, 98
Overbeck, Johann Friedrich, 126
Papias, 84
Pasquali, Giorigo, 9
Pelagius, I23
Peter, 21, 44, 48, I25, 176
Philo of Alexandria, 4, 9
Philostratus, II
Pindar, I27
Plata, 4, II
Pliny the Elder, 50
Poe, Edgar Allan, 138
Polybus, 96
Proculus, I5
Pseudo-Barnabas, 72
Puder, Martin, 88
Rabanus Maurus, 85
Ranciere, Jacques, 57f
Rosenzweig, Franz, 5
Rufinus, 92
Riistaw, Alexander, 73
Sabbatai Sevi, 59, 144
Sabinus, I4f
Sarah, 9, 122, 153, 158
Schmitt, Carl, I04f; I09f; lI8, 144f
I97
Scholem, Gershom, 3, 5, 69, 74f; 97,

144f
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 143
Scotus, John Duns, 38
Sedulius, 85
Shammai, 14
Shestov, Lev Isakovich, 4
Solmi, Renata, 143
Staiger, Emil, 4f
Stirner, Max, 31f
Strobel, August, no
Suda , 96
Taubes, Jacob, 2ft; 33ft; 55, I04, 140f
Tertullian, 72, I09
Theodore of Mopsueta, 92
Theodore of Cyrene, 92
Thomas, Yan, 28
Ticonius, 76, 92, 94
Tischendorf, Constantin von, 6
Tomson, Peter ]., 14
Traube, Ludwig, 16, 139
Trebatius, 15
Trubetzkoy, NikolaI Sergue"ievitch,
101
Trypho, 17
Ulpian, 14
Vaihinger, Hans, 35ft; 4I
Victorinus, Marius, 92
Vitellius, 15
Warburg, Aby, 60
Watson, Alan, 14
Weber, Max, 20ft; 29, 31
Westcott, Brooke Foss, 6
Whorf, Benjamin, 37f
Wilamowitz-Mollendorf;
Ulrich von, 3
Wilcke, Hans-Alwin, 72
Wolbert, Werner, 25
Yehuda Halevi, 5
Zechariah, 6I

Giorgio Agamben The Time That Remains

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Giorgio Agamben The Time That Remains

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Giorgio Agamben The Time That Remains

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Stanford University Press

Permission granted by James ]. Wilhelm to reprint his trans

Acknowledgments and Translator's Note

The First Day

Paulos doulos christou Ie'sou

In memoriam: Jacob Taubes, 3 Paul's Language, 3

The Second Day

Beruf, 19 Vocation and Revocation,23 Chresis, 26

The Third Day

Pharisee,45 The Divided People,47 The Cut: of

The Fourth Day

Nabi, 60 Apocalyptic,62 Operational Time, 65 Kairos

The Fifth Day

Eis euaggelion theou

Eis, 88 Euaggelion, 88 Plirophoria, 91 Nomos, 91

The Sixth Day

(Eis euaggelion theou)

Oath, II3 Deditio in fidem, II5 Bait, II7

Image, I41 Jetztzeit, 143

Appendix: Interlinear Translation ofPauline Texts

The ideas in this book developed over a series of seminars: ini

[ Translator's note. In accordance with the desire of the author, all

Acknowledgments and Translator's Note

possible with regard to the author's personal translation. Various

The First Day

First and foremost, this seminar proposes to restore Paul's

THE TIME THAT REMAINS

origin and end that this implies. The possibility of understanding

This expression appears in English in Taubes.

The First Day

THE TIME THAT REMAINS

The First Day

matical language: making it a minor language, a jargon (as Kafka

THE TIME THAT REMAIN S

PAULOS DOULOS CHRISTOU IESOU, KLETOS APOSTOLOS APHORIS

The Ten Words

translation by Jerome used for centuries by

The First Day

Paulos doulos christou Jesou kletos, apostolos aphorismenos eis euagge

THE TIME THAT REMAINS

mit m e t o refer you t o the early study b y Hermann Dessau (1910)

The First Day

sangre, purity of blood, that discriminate against those with

THE TIME THAT REMAINS

kai leaves no room for speculation around its referring to a sur

Saulos qui et Paulos therefore carries within itself an onomastic

prophecy that would sustain a long legacy. Metanomasia realizes

The First Day

instance, the name Paul is immediately linked t o the word doulos,

The methodological precaution of excluding everything that

THE TIME THAT REMAIN S

Testament is inextricable from the history of its tradition and transla

The importance of the term doulos (servant, slave) in Paul is

The First Day

oppose doulos to eleutheros (free) and follow the antithesis Jew/Greek

THE TIME THAT REMAINS

that comprise this verse, kletos, "calling," constitutes a kind of con

The First Day

ed in a legacy of stores. Sabinus writes to the same effect in his books