6. Symphony
Of Emergence
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Age of Revelation, or Eonic Transition?
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| 6.3.1 Age of Revelation or Eonic Transition? | ||||
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The only explanation of ‘ET5, Israel’ is the eonic, but this does not mean we understand it. What were the facts? We should avail ourselves of the shortest outline of a History of Israel possible, for there is a genuinely eonic (Axial phase) character to what we call the transitional period without its source tale, generally a Patriarchal or Exodus account, whose historical status is myth. This myth, however, makes rough sense of the context of civilizations and empires and their V-cones from which Israel emerged. Against the backdrop of unreliable data stands the veiled account of a transitional period, whose structure in essence is exactly as in Greece . The Greeks entered their transition with their Iliad, the Israelites exited a transition with theirs, a history that is really ‘eonic history’. ‘ET5, Israel,…’: We note here briefly the terminology of the appendix, which rigorously enforces the ‘stream and sequence’ block analysis of the basic model. This time-slice approach makes much better sense of the data. This higher level of abstraction might help to distance oneself from traditional accounts. The study of Israel from the eonic perspective is in the final analysis the most effective for it can help in seeing that the impulse to find transcendental explanations is automatically suggested by the intangibility of the eonic sequence . Minimum Eonic Periodization of ‘Histories of Israel’: 1. t-stream approach 2. transition al data or evidence: e-sequence intersection 3. divide period 4. realization period. That’s it, our eonic history of Israel. Reflect on the overall dynamic context. Since this pattern fits the Hellenic as well as the Upanishadic-Buddhist emergence, we must then set it aside, and mount a full-scale expedition into the data without the transcendental myth. The only safe data, as the Greek example might have forewarned us, is that of the prophetic period, precisely at the climax of phase, and the period of the Exile and the post-Exilic history. David and Solomon are almost like Achilles, and Agamemnon, probably existed... The eonic matrix shows us the master key, satisfied by all accounts. The Old Testament redactors in the period from after the Exile unconsciously followed a procedure based on these steps, for the same reason the modern historian is confused by the continuity-discontinuity paradox of the modern, its medieval antecedent, and the sudden clustering near a divide. Thus it is important to see that the redactors were at step 4, overwhelmed by the period at step 3, and attempting to interpret, create, and include the remnant documents and memories of steps 2, and the mythical or semi-historical step 1. 1. First we have the ‘primordial’ semi-historical Abraham/Moses stage, corresponding to the mid-eonic phase of the Canaanite cultures in the shadow of the Middle Eastern empires springing from Babylon and Egypt, the world of the Ugarit. 2. This period of the t-stream leads into the just-before period of Solomon, the history and kingdom of a people in a not especially extraordinary Mediterranean kingdom and empire, flourishing and then going into what many describe as a start of political decline. The kingdom is evidently not the transitional phenomenon. By -750 the age of the prophets is the one clear outer symptom of the transition given to us, so parallel with the Upanishadic Age. It is this phase of the prophets that tokens the period of transition as such, just as the Greek philosophers token the Greek transition. 3. We see the climax of the prophetic movement just as the divide point is reached. It is indeed extraordinary to see the emergence of monotheism and its sudden packaging in the period after -600. As the system crosses the divide we see the Persian phenomenon and its state ‘Zoroastrianism’, blending in, and then the great expansion of the Jewish network into the Middle East and Mediterranean worlds. The ship has set sail, and we are in the emerging world of Judaism. Shot out of a cannon, the Israelites become Jews and burrow into the Roman Empire as a parallel counterpoint to the ‘great Athens’ passing into Rome. Like a ‘throw and catch’ in a computer program it is this strain in the great classical phase that will unveil from its latency the ‘failsafe’ response to the great passage from transitional ‘eonic determination’ to ‘free action’. As our system passes from Solon to Pericles, to Alexander, to the Caesars, a ‘recovery’ vehicle emerges in halting steps from the Judaic branch as the rising oikoumene inherits of the benefits of parallelism. It is significant, as a lost strain of this transition, that the tale of the Exodus myth expresses one of the first appearances in world history of the type of ‘revolutionary ideology’, however seminal in form. The Post-Exilic world was many things, and one aspect of it was a conservative continuation of the type of ‘temple culture’ already very ancient in the Middle East. The ‘revolution’ is still the ‘revolution of the ages’ with its transparent symbolism of ‘new age’ and ‘Egyptian repression’. The Old Testament as a record of eonic evolution It is highly useful to rewrite in one’s mind the Old Testament as evidence of an evolutionary process in our sense. As we look backwards at the era of the first religions (in the context of civilization) we must wonder what we are missing. If only we had some record, for example, of the period ca. –5500 in Northern Mesopotamia, we might see the eonic evolution of religion in its correct context. The Old Testament is a true first in world history. An Axial divide? The interval definition of the Axial Age is too large, collates two periods, and conceals a rough divide. Our eonic scheme is better It is worth savoring for a moment the synchronous emergence of the Old Testament collations and the passage of the Greek Archaic into the brief period of Classical flowering. The period of Solon and of Josiah and the crystallization of a new national religion in Judah, followed by the Exile, are the significant moments leading us to place a divide (quite tentatively) at this point roughly ca. –600. The match to our model is remarkable indeed, as the system marshals its resources in slingshot fashion. The standard literature here can be very misleading. By our rough measure the ‘eonic determination of democracy’ would be invisibly inside the transition, but democracy as free action should be directly emergent after a divide. It is remarkable, though still speculative, to see how well the puzzle fits. It defies chance, and we see the halting ‘democracy as free action’ emerge in the generations after Solon and nose-dive within two centuries. |
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