Abstract
There are long stories told of a certain animal. Here are some of the tales. In the beginning, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). The lofty genesis of men and women created in the image of God was balanced by the pointed reminder of the lowly material God had to use: "You are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). After this certain animal multiplied and organized into different groups, God reen- tered the story and from a burning bush addressed a young man. "God called... 'Moses, Moses!" (Exodus 3:4). When God told him to go to Pharaoh and the elders, Moses asked about who God is and about who he is. God answered, "I am who I am," the God who really exists, YHWH. Still Moses wondered, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh...?" (3:11). He added a series of personal doubts: "they will not believe me or listen to my voice" (4:1); "I am not eloquent" (4:10); and finally, "Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person" (4:13). Yet Moses goes armed with the rod of God. The struggle of this imaged dust with its Creator is reflected in a story circulated around those lands. Job, through no apparent fault of his own, became embroiled in a dispute with God. After lengthy argumentation, Job, a just man, saw the light and concluded, "Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (42:6). For his recognition of God's absolute sovereignty, in spite of his reasoned dispute, Job was restored to wealth and family. While this, shall we say, J Story was growing, there was another tradition aborning, an H Story. Virtuous heroes vied for success in war, games, and power. A city was sacked through the trick of a gift horse; a noble warrior, Hector, was killed; yet the conqueror, Achilles, was doomed because of an unprotected tendon. Paradoxically, even the best meet tragic ends through faultless flaws. Wily tricks as well as virtue were needed for Odysseus to regain home and win his wife. He craftily gave himself the name "No One" to escape the overly literal Cyclops. The H Story discovers reason as a means to virtue. A gadfly Athenian, Socrates, defended himself against prosecution by telling what he would do for anyone he met. "I will question and cross-examine and test him, and if I think he does not possess virtue but only says so, I will show that he sets very little value on things most precious,... and I will put him to shame." He said, "this is what God commands me... to persuade you, both young and old, not to care for your bodies or your monies first, and to care more exceedingly for the soul" (Plato: Apology 29E-30B).
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