Bible Commentator

Work In Progess

AN IMAGINATIVE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN OEDIPUS (THE MAN WHO SOUGHT THE TRUTH) AND FAUST (THE MAN WHO SOUGHT KNOWLEDGE)1

FAUST MEETS OEDIPUS WITH COMMENTARY BY CASSANDRA

A New Play by Moshe Reiss

On 12:01 AM On January 1, 2000, at a New Millennium Party in Delphi.

It is Sabbath eve.

Are all significant encounters ‘pure chance’.

The Theological issues to be debated between Oedipus and Faust are what is more important -  an obsessive quest for TRUTH or KNOWLEDGE?

Truth is knowing God

Knowledge is human – infinite, limited and fallible.

‘Enter our games, then; ease your heart of trouble’.

Oedipus will claim that his master (Sophocles) intended to write a comedy to achieve the enormous popularity of Aristophanes. But since he had previously only written tragedies he was cast as a tragedian and misunderstood. (Euripides had the same problem with Medea.) The ancient Greeks understood that comedy was more important than tragedy due to Aristotle great two books, one on ‘Tragedy’ and one on ‘Comedy’. Unfortunately as we all know the three copies of his book of ‘Comedy’ was lost. The first when great Library of Alexandria was burnt during a pogrom against the Jewish ghetto next to the library in 116 CE . Jews being great readers built their ghetto next to the library. The second copy in Athens was burnt after Constantine’s conversion when he decided to burn all books by Pagans. The third hidden copy was burnt at great library in the monastery, a story retold by Umberto Eco in the ‘Name of the Rose’.

Oedipus will claim that he never slept with his mother and that the twentieth century is his best yet. This despite Freud being wrong and that the  real childhood sexual issues should have been named the Orestes complex. All male children want to kill their mothers since mothers are always disciplining their male children; fathers spoil them,

Faust of course claims that the twentieth century is his worst. He used to be able to read about all knowledge by reading the few books published each year. Now not only are hundreds of thousands of books published each year but he has to read ten billion Internet sites. Do you realize that the Internet contains seventeen times more knowledge than the United States Library of Congress?

He wishes everyone followed the great Hasidic Rabbi - 'the Kotzker' (who like Oedipus was more concerned with truth than knowledge and thus was a depressive as was Reb Nachman) once said not everything thought needs to be spoken, not everything spoken needs to be written, not everything written needs to be published. After he asked Oedipus what was it like to sleep with your mother he tells Oedipus his dream marriage. But first we need to know about a strange but true French law.

The Great French writers were very angry at God after the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755. We all know that Voltaire wrote Candide only four years later. It was based on that tragic event. Voltaire and his friends decided to punish God by creating a Godless marriage and to alleviate some of the pain of persons who would have become widows and widowers if they had married before the earthquake. They had a law passed. Those who had already registered their marriage in Church could then marry their dead partners. Of course this applied only to French citizens. So I Faust became a French citizen. I then applied to the French President to marry Mary, Jesus’ mother. Unlike you who married your mother (which you claim you did not – a typical Freudian denial), I wanted to marry a Mary who had children and remained a virgin. We know that she remained a virgin because Vatican I proclaimed it and infallibly. If I marry the Mother of God I might be able to continue my quest for knowledge and in addition defeat Mephistopheles.

My favorite hero was Leonardo Da Vinci. He was not only an encyclopedia of knowledge writing 7000 pages of information and backwards, but he created knowledge.   He was one of the greatest painters and sculptures of all time. He invented the idea of the car, helicopter, tank, parachute telescope, the idea of caricature, a great painter and many others. (In fact the only thing his lover Michelangelo was better at was sculpting.) And he created the Shroud of Turin made in his image, not Jesus’. It as been dated to the 1300’s; Leonardo simply used a piece of 200 years old. Don’t you realize that the face of the Mona Lisa resembled his version of the Shroud of Turin?

Cassandra commentary is based on her being the sighted prophet who always told the TRUTH but was never believed. She is Oedipus’ favorite prophet. As he tells Faust it is obvious that I am not blind. The whole enterprise ‘Oedipus Rex’ was as I already told you intended as a ‘Comedy’. I did not blind myself; people do not blind themselves as a joke. Besides why would I blind myself to be like the blind prophet Teiresias who kept telling me the TRUTH was not what I wanted.

Faust at the end of his is blinded!

She recognizes that Oedipus’ obsession for TRUTH is the same as Job’s. For Job TRUTH is Justice. Despite the fairy tale end God does not supply Job with TRUTH, only KNOWLEDGE. Oedipus get the TRUTH – it is so bad that he blinds himself.

Marlow tells us Faust offered his Soul in exchange for Knowledge.

Faust tells us he offered his life.

Discussion: What is the value of a Soul? Faust trades it for Knowledge. Job keeps his, but loses his children (never mind his wife). Oedipus wife is his mother; is the worst?

OEDIPUS – re Archimedes:

Do you meet Leibnitz or Newton who both claimed to independently invent calculus.

I met the man who really invented calculus and the idea of infinity about almost two thousand years earlier – Archimedes. I never quite understood his idea that space had to be sliced infinitely to arrive at finite Truth.  I asked him whether he meant mathematic Truth or religious truth; he answered as I think Newton would have answered – they are the same.  

Less than a decade ago a text of Archimedes written in about 1000 CE, written over with Psalms by the monks was found with twentieth century illustrations of the Apostles.  It is still being renovated to find the oldest text of that great Greek Mathematician. .

    

What would be the world’s knowledge of truth if we had not lost Archimedes knowledge?

TZVI;

THOUGHTS ON TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

Poor Faust, hung up on knowledge. It reminds me of the Catholic vice of curiosity and the Charedi doctrine of salvation through knowledge (of Talmud).  The source of the confusion between truth and knowledge  lies, perhaps, in the idealist identity of being and idea, the doctrine that ideas are real and that the mind that contemplates an idea is in union with an essential reality. 

 

Certainly, to know something and to know about it (information) are not the same, although just where to draw the line between them (e.g., knowledge of G-d and information about G-d)  is not so clear. I have always been puzzled by people who are more interested in knowing about things than knowing them. But, of course, that is exactly the spirit of much modern scholarship. Ultimately, it comes down to this: we can use the mind to get closer to things or to distance things.

The first is redemptive knowing, the mind in the service of love, philosophy as the handmaiden of theology. The second is...the opposite. Though the opposite is not hate, but simply the absence of an interest in being close, a reduction of relationship to the subject-object format of thinking.  

 

Perhaps the primary intellectual vice is the rejection of thinking-that-brings-close for the sake of thinking-that-distances. And perhaps this is what Chazal had in mind when they said that a person who interrupts his learning to comment on the beauty  of a tree mitcheiyev b'nafsho.  Were Chazal aware of the concept of aesthetic distance?

 

The vice of curiosity is intellectual lust: fixation on the body, the outside of things that anyone can know without being close, knowledge that yields itself to a mind that ravishes rather than contemplates or adores, knowledge that is the product of method and system, rather than dialogue, contact and communion.

 

Stop! I'm  pushing things too far, creating a convenient but exaggerated polarity.  Yes, there is a middle way. Rational, discoursive thinking can also be a form of redemptive knowing, and not just by being a handmaiden to  faith. How? The answer lies in the concept of ritual: rational thought is the intellectual analogue to ritual.

 

The central concept of ritual is that which is small contains that which is large. Chazal articulate this principle, though I don't quite recall where. I think they mention several instances, at least one in relation to the capacity of the Temple Mount. In any case, just as the Temple contained the the Presence of G-d who is bigger than all the world, a physical gesture can contain great meaning and, of course, so can words and thoughts. Of course, in this sense, all language might be regarded as ritual and perhaps there is some value in looking at it that way.

 

But what I have in mind is this: even when a person objectifies something by making it the object of rational thought, so long as he does it affirming that it's  bigger than he thinks, (bigger in value and meaning) than the thought which contains it, his thinking is a vehicle of contact. Even though his thought addresses an external dimension, a dimension that can be known and dissociated from essence and value, he is aware that his thought is the occasion for contact with something deeper.  That's  thought as ritual.

 

But if that's the case, what was the problem with turning from learning Torah to comment on the beauty of a tree? To remark on the beauty of a tree is tantamount to saying that its more than just a tree. Its a ritual thought.  And in any case, that kind of appreciation of nature can lead a person to the love of G-d (Rambam).

 

I  think that Chazal are making a distinction between ritual thought-objects, and making the point that the words of Torah make for better thought ritual than images of the world.

 

Of course,  the mind of the modern world is a knowing-about mind, a mind that does not recognize the ritual function of thought. The only sanctuary from that is the arts.

 

And perhaps that's one of the essential features of a dying culture. The culture no longer works, but it still promises, so people do all they can to know as much about it as possible.

 

The information explosion is the final pop of a fundamentally materialist drive to dominance in science and commerce.  In modern culture, the preoccupation with knowing-about can no longer be counted a vice because it has become the fixed habit of intellectual life. As such, It generates many of the values of modern culture, such as the tolerance of all varieties of artistic expression regardless of their content. There's no essential difference between them for a person who knows-about rather than knows and makes real contact with them.

 

Nevertheless, modern man may recognize his compulsive pursuit of knowledge (i.e., information) as descendent of vice because, like all vice, it promises much and gives little. It substitutes endless variety for meaning and endless repetition for contact. (cf. history with life in the Garden)

 

But, of course, where would we be without modern science, the brainchild of knowing-about? Well, the answer will be clearer thirty years from now, when the world is in chaos and all kinds of things are coming to an end through fire (global warming) and/or ice (global cooling, as in England). I feel like a cowboy, holding the reins of his bucking bronco as he waits for the gate to open.

 

   

MORE TZVI

BROTHER-IN-LAW

In this idea of a special immunity for the aged, there lurks something of the ancient Homeric code of ethics that assigns honour a higher value than life itself -- Thou shalt not kill anyone whom it is dishonorable to kill. Widely referred to today as the ethics of the ‘shame culture,’ it is popularly identified with a non-Christian world view and contrasted with the so-called ‘guilt culture’ of Judeo-Christian society that supposedly sets more store by conscience and personal responsibility for one’s actions than by how others view them.  

 

My brother-in-law asked me if I thought there was any direct connection between the Gaon's two categories of sin (lust and arrogance) and Rav Soloveitchik's two Adams. I thought you might be interested in my response:

 

There’s a big difference between making and object and creating a world: I am not part of an object I create. It is entirely other.  But I am part of the world I create. A world is both self and other . To take me from my world is to disrupt my inner life. I value the objects in my world because they have qualities that make them important to me. I value food because it is live-giving. I value books because they are a source of wisdom and knowledge. But the values which make objects important are not known to me primarily through the objects they qualify. I know them  directly. I contemplate them as though they were substantial realities in their own right, and aspire to them as goals. It is because I know them I their own right that I recognize them in objects.

 

The two Adams of Rav Soloveitchik are personifications of these two ways of relating to the world. One Adam is a conqueror and a creator who sees G-d through his active involvement in the objects of the world. The other is contemplative. He knows the Divine and the life of the soul directly, as substantial realities which are his primary concern.

 

Therefore the typology of the two Adams is not directly related to the Vilna Gaon’s two categories of sin.

 

All the best,

Tzvi

 

“…man is directed to G-d as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason…” .” (Summa Theo. Q.1,1, I answer that….)  

 

How could it be that G-d would endow man with an intelligence which is not adequate to the purpose G-d Himself ordained for him?  

 

G-d could not have made man like that, for such a creature would be fundamentally flawed, essentially unsuited to its own ends. It must be that man once had that intelligence and lost it. But only a radical turning away from his true end could have deprived him of necessary knowledge of his true end. Ergo, man sinned.  He rebelled against G-d,  He turned from Him although he had the intelligence to understand that he had been created to direct himself to G-d.

 

But how could man sin before his intelligence was clouded by ignorance of the Divine and his own Divine nature? Because he was not moved to sin by the attraction of some lesser good. He was moved to sin in an effort to realize his own Divine nature. His sin is grounded in the fundamental paradox of his existence: That although the Divine nature is simple, although G-d is one,  man partakes in the Divine in a way that allows him to feel Divine.  All creatures partake of the Divine nature as Being, but no other creature his aware of himself as a center of being. His sin was an effort to validate and realize the experience of his own Divine soul.

 

It is because Adam was a center of being that he possessed powers no other creature, no even the angels possessed. He possessed Divine wisdom which enabled him to name the animals (The midrash tells us that G-d demonstrated Adam’s superiority by showing the angels that he could do that. ), and see “from one end of the world to the other.” (midrash) And he possessed freedom of choice. Freedom of choice means that the will to act is attributed to the person himself, not a driving passion or an overpowering vision. It means that Adam, like G-d, was an unmoved mover.  

 

All the best,

Tzvi

“…man is directed to G-d as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason…” .” (Summa Theo. Q.1,1, I answer that….)  

 

How could it be that G-d would endow man with an intelligence which is not adequate to the purpose G-d Himself ordained for him?  

 

G-d could not have made man like that, for such a creature would be fundamentally flawed, essentially unsuited to its own ends. It must be that man once had that intelligence and lost it. But only a radical turning away from his true end could have deprived him of necessary knowledge of his true end. Ergo, man sinned.  He rebelled against G-d,  He turned from Him although he had the intelligence to understand that he had been created to direct himself to G-d.

 

But how could man sin before his intelligence was clouded by ignorance of the Divine and his own Divine nature? Because he was not moved to sin by the attraction of some lesser good. He was moved to sin in an effort to realize his own Divine nature. His sin is grounded in the fundamental paradox of his existence: That although the Divine nature is simple, although G-d is one,  man partakes in the Divine in a way that allows him to feel Divine.  All creatures partake of the Divine nature as Being, but no other creature his aware of himself as a center of being. His sin was an effort to validate and realize the experience of his own Divine soul.

 

It is because Adam was a center of being that he possessed powers no other creature, no even the angels possessed. He possessed Divine wisdom which enabled him to name the animals (The midrash tells us that G-d demonstrated Adam’s superiority by showing the angels that he could do that. ), and see “from one end of the world to the other.” (midrash) And he possessed freedom of choice. Freedom of choice means that the will to act is attributed to the person himself, not a driving passion or an overpowering vision. It means that Adam, like G-d, was an unmoved mover.  

 

All the best,

Tzvi

 

Play opens with the three angels Raphael, Gabriel and Michael – Macbeth opens with three witches.

Reminds me of Macbeth.

Then Mephistopheles asks the Lord

‘Since you, O Lord, once more draw near

 

What! Did the Lord forget what happed in Job when he asked that question?

Socrates was wrong.

There, I said it. Three little words to undermine the greatest intellectual mankind has ever known. My power amazes even me.

I long for five minutes with the old sage. Here’s what I’d ask:

Me: So, Soc, are you happy with your lot?

Socrates (a cup of hemlock clasped in his hand): Are you kidding? You think this is the way I planned to retire? This city has got to do something about its pension schemes.

Me: Whatever. Records show you’ve lived a long, rich life. The length of your beard is testament to your age, your wisdom, and your fundamental failure as a human being.

Socrates: I beg your pardon?

Me: I’m sure you do. But you’re not going to get it. I say you’ve wasted your life. I say you’re nothing but a misguided klutz!

Socrates: Do my ears deceive me? Can this no-good handsome young upstart be so bold? Who in Arcadia’s name are you anyways?

Me: Never mind the details. Let’s just say I’ve come to set you straight on a few things. First, what’s this malarkey about how the unexamined life is not worth living?

Socrates: Malarkey? That’s the cornerstone of my entire value system. You want to step outside? I’ll break your nose.

Me: Ah, so there is some fire in your belly after all? You’re not just an over-intellectualised pansy?

Socrates (fuming): I’ll have you.

Me: Stop dreaming. What are you going to do exactly, bore me to death with discourse?

Socrates: It’s never failed me yet.

Me: Well you’re dealing with a different kettle of fish now, mister.

Socrates: I wondered what that smell was.

Me: Oh, sure, mock me with your clever little one-liners. Typical of you.

Socrates (grinning): The tongue is mightier than the bicep.

Me: Yeah. Well in your case that happens to be technically accurate. What’s the matter, don’t they feed sages in Greece?

Socrates: Thought is all the sustenance I need.

Me: Yeah? Well I’m starving. Any kebab joints do delivery round here?

Socrates: Your five minutes is almost over.

Me: So stop distracting me. What I’ve come to say is this: contrary to your arrogant assumption, the unexamined life is worth living. In fact, it’s the examined life that sucks.

Socrates: Interesting. You got a card?

Me: A man who is all brain and no heart never truly lives. Logic has its place. But love ... Love is where it’s at.

Socrates: Can you say that in Ancient Greek? You’re losing me here.

Me: I thought you were supposed to be clever. Try to keep up, would you? I’m saying there are limits to intellectual inquiry.

Socrates: In your case, I don’t doubt it.

Me: Dialogue is all well and good, but what about feelings?

Socrates: What about them?

Me: Well, I’m not sure exactly. Quit intimidating me.

Socrates: Never.

Me: Great. You know what you are? You’re a bane on man’s collective conscience.

Socrates (looking immensely pleased with himself): We all gotta live.

Me: Which is exactly my point.

Socrates: Oh, so you have one?

Me: Emphatically. If you had your way we’d spend our whole lives considering, deliberating, debating. I’m saying that’s no life at all. I’m saying logic is the enemy of love, that the two are at war, and love has all the big weapons.

Socrates (raising an eyebrow): I’ve heard about men like you. Ever been to a toga party?

Me (embarrassed): No, you’ve got me all wrong. You mind if I read from some notes I brought? They’re just some little jottings...

Socrates (smirking): Feel free.

Me (ironically): I’m trying. OK, so look: love, for want of a less loaded term, is the internal combustion engine of mankind.

Socrates: The what?

Me: The wars, the conflicts, the violence, the destruction – these are just the toxic emissions. Lift up the human bonnet, and you’ll see what keep us motoring: love, in all its weird and even weirder forms.

Socrates: Are you OK? Want some hemlock?

Me: You know, for a man so obsessed with dialogue, you’re an awful listener.

Socrates: What’s the point? No one’s got anything to teach me. I’m Socrates!

Me: Oh, so I am in the right place, then. I was starting to wonder. Is what I’m saying so difficult to comprehend?

Socrates: Yes.

Me: OK, then let me put it another way. There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to human behaviour.

Socrates: You can say that again.

Me: I will. There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to human behaviour.

Socrates: Catchy.

Me: Yeah, thanks.

Socrates: So there’s no logic. So what? There should be.

Me: Ah, but should there?

Socrates: Yes.

Me: Oh. Well I say otherwise. I say logic stops us being human. I say no logic, no philosophy, ideology or smart-arsed intellectual theory can detract from the reality of an aching, breaking or throbbing heart – not to mention one doing all three at once. I say love is all you need. Love and money, anyway.

Socrates: Then you’re an idiot.

Me: Maybe so. But at least I’m unhappy.

Socrates: Eh?

Me: Remember Aphrodite?

Socrates (bobbing his eyebrows up and down): Very well!

Me: Right. The Greek Goddess of Love. Conceived when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus and the kid lobbed the old man’s genitals into the ocean. I tell you pal, it’s been downhill ever since.

Socrates: Oh good Apollo! You’re not an idiot, you’re a nut!

Me (wringing my hands): Don’t you see? That’s what it’s all about. Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde – that’s real living! In comparison, you’re nothing but a tiresome old windbag. You’re no better than other non-believers: communists, rationalists, perverts, feminists, cynics, all the women I ever meet. History is littered with people who think love is an illusion, nothing but a Hollywood-inspired fantasy designed to keep the gawping masses ignorant of their true consciousness. But you perfectionists don’t fool me. I’m the last incurable romantic. Forget politics, forget dialogue, find yourself a good woman, or whatever you’re into, and take off for Persia.

Socrates (whipping off his toga): You’re right. Let’s go!

Me: What?

Socrates: You’ve sold me. Give me your hand. We’ll skip through meadows, smell the flowers, recite poetry, gaze into each other’s eyes, then die a tragic death, side by side.

Me: Er, look. I think we need to talk.

Know who you are!

Introduction

Faust: There is Oedipus, Hi my name is Faust and know you, you are Oedipus.

Oedipus: I know who you are, But who was your Master The Old English competitor to Shakespeare Christopher Marlow, the old German Goethe or the New German Thomas Mann. You are an interesting legendary character.

I read about your obsession with KNOWLEDGE. You were even willing to trade your soul for knowledge.

And what is a Soul that is worth bartering?

F: And you were obsessed with TRUTH even if it destroyed you.

Discussion of TRUTH vs. KNOWLEDGE

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F: I always wondered what is it like to sleep with your mother?

O. Nobody ever asked me that question before; in three thousand years? But it never happened. How old is you mother?

F: 250 years, why?

O: Would you sleep with a 250 old women even if she was your mother?

This tragedy was intended by my master Sophocles as a comedy. During his days Aristophanes was the most famous and popular playwright in Greece. My master wanted to be as well liked as Aristophanes so he wrote a comedy about me sleeping with my mother. But everyone thought my master only wrote tragedies, so they took his work, Oedipus Rex as a tragedy.

The reason Greek tragedies became more famous that comedies despite comedies being more famous during our days has to with Aristotle.

Aristotle wrote among other works two great books on theatre; one on tragedies and one on comedies. As I’m sure you know being the person who has book knowledge, the book on comedy disappeared. Aristotle’s student Alexander place one copy in his famous library in Alexandria and one in the library in Athens. The copy in Alexander was burnt by one of three persons, Julius Caesar, Theophilus, the Patriarch or Caliph Omar. Some claim there never was a great library in Alexandria, but I know there was I was there. The great library in Athens was burnt down by Constantine. I was there when his barbarians who then called themselves Christians burnt it down and built a Church in its stead. The Library was full of books written by Pagans.

F: I always wondered if there was knowledge in books at these two great libraries I never read and lack some part of the knowledge I traded by soul for all knowledge. Everyone knows Aristotle wrote a great book on ‘Comedies’. Brother William of Backersville eventually discovered it at the monastery in Northern Italy. Brother William was a student of Roger Bacon at Oxford. I greatly admired Roger Bacon, the monk for his seeking of knowledge. He helped re-introduce Aristotle, a non-Christian into the syllabus of the University. He then taught Aristotle at the University of Paris. He was imprisoned in Italy for twelve years for teaching this heretic. By unfortunately Before Brother William could find the great book the library of the monastary was burnt, and the book disappeared again.

 I have  heard that Aristotle ‘s book of Comedy was at these two great libraries and destroyed. I have read about the legend of who burn down the great Library in Alexandria; do you know who burnt down the Library?

O: Yes, but first the legends:

Julius Caesar

It is often said that the Romans were civilised but their most famous general was responsible for the greatest act of vandalism during antiquity. Julius Caesar was attacking Alexandria in pursuit of his archrival Pompey when he found himself about to be cut off by the Egyptian fleet. Realising that this would leave him in a desperate predicament, he took decisive action and sent fire ships into the harbour. His plan was a success and the enemy fleet was quickly aflame. But the fire did not stop these and jumped onto the dockside which was laden with flammable materials ready for export. Next it spread in land and before anyone could stop it, the Great Library itself was blazing brightly as 400,000 priceless scrolls were reduced to ashes. As for Caesar himself, did not think it important enough to mention this in his memoirs.

Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria

Theophilus,  the patron saint of arsonists. As Christianity slowly strangled the life out of classical culture in the forth century it became more and more difficult to be a pagan. There stood in Alexandria the great temple of Serapis called the Serapeum and attached to it was the Great Library of Alexandria where all the wisdom of the ancients was preserved. Now Theophilus knew that as long as this knowledge existed people would be less inclined to believe the Bible so he set about destroying the pagan temples. But the Serapeum was a huge structure, high on a mound and beyond the abilities of the raging Christian fanatics to assault. Faced with this edifice, the Patriarch sent word to Rome. There the Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had ordered that paganism be annihilated, gave his permission for the destruction of the Serapeum. Realising they had no chance, the priests and priestesses fled their temple and the mob moved in. The vast structure was razed to it foundations and the scrolls from the library were burnt in huge pyres in the streets of Alexandria.Christian Rome was pleased.

Caliph Omar of Damascus:

The Moslems invaded Egypt during the seventh century as their fanaticism carried them on conquests that would take form an empire stretching from Spain to India. There was not much of a struggle in Egypt and the locals found the rule of the Caliph to be more tolerant than that of the Byzantines before them. However, when a Christian called John informed the local Arab general that there existed in Alexandria a great Library preserving all the knowledge in the world he was perturbed. Eventually he sent word to Damascus where Caliph Omar ordered that all the books in the library should be destroyed because, as he said "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." Therefore, the books and scrolls were taken out of the library and distributed as fuel to the many bathhouses of the city. So enormous was the volume of literature that it took six months for it all to be burnt to ashes heating the saunas of the conquerors.

F: So who burnt the Great Library, a Roman Barbarian, a Christian who converted from being a Jew or a Muslim?

O: None of the above. During the Kitos war in 115 CE when the Pagans attacked the large Jewish community, the Library was near the Jewish community, they were big readers even then, a big wind threw the fires from the Jewish homes into the Library.

F. How is it I never heard about that.

O. The Christians wanted to blame the Barbarians, the Romans blamed the Christians and eventually everyone blamed the Muslims.

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F. How did Sophocles comedy become a tragedy.

O. Everyone was jealous of the kudos that Aristophanes received, every body loved comedies. In fact Euripedes great tragedy ‘Medea’ was supposed to be a comedy, but that is for another time, another story. So my master came up with a ludicrous idea sex with your mother, he thought that would make a great comedy, as good as Lysistrata. In that comedy the girls decide no sex until the wars end, Sophocles thought sex with your Mother would be equally funny. But since he had only written tragedies it was assumed that he did it again. That is why he was different than Shakespeare who wrote tragedy, comedy, romantics and historian plays as well as erotic poetry. The Greek were more focused. In the Greek days everyone loved comedies, tragedies were not as popular. Even Aristotle preferred  comedies, but since his book on tragedies was destroyed everyone assumed that the Greeks loved tragedies.

The business about my blinded myself was obviously a piece of fiction as you can see I am not blind. Besides why would I blind myself to be like the opponent the blind prophet Teiresias who kept telling me the TRUTH was not what I should want.

The last century has been my most famous. Freud discovered that every man wants to have sex with his mother – he took my masters comedy seriously. But the great majority of Freud’s patients were hysterical women who certainly did not want to sleep with their mother; they wanted their father’s. He should have taken The House of Atreus trilogy where Electra convinces her brother Orestes to kill Mommies lover to avenge their father Agememnon. He should have called the women’s hysteria disease an Electra complex. Eugene O’Neil understood that and named his play ‘Morning becomes Electra’.  

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F. My favorite hero was Leonardo Da Vinci. He was not only an encylopedia of knowledge writing 7000 pages of information, written backwards, but he created knowledge.   He was one of the greatest painters and sculptures of all time. He invented the idea of the car, helicopter, tank, parachute telescope, the idea of caricature and many others. And he created the Shroud of Turin which has his image, not Jesus’. It as been dated to the 1300’s; he used a piece of 200 years old. Did you realize that the face of the Mona Lisa resembled him as well the Shroud of Turin?

F. The Great French writers were very angry at God after the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755. We all know that Voltaire wrote Candide only four years later. It was based on that tragic event. Voltaire and his friends decided to punish God by creating a Godless marriage and to alleviate some of the pain of persons who would have become widows and widowers if they had married before the earthquake. They had a law passed. Those who had already registered their marriage in Church could then marry their dead partners. Of course this applied only to French citizens. So I became a French citizen. I then applied to the French President to marry Mary, Jesus’ mother. Unlike you who married your mother, I wanted to marry a Mary who had children and remained a virgin. We know that she remained a virgin because Vatican I proclaimed it and infallibly. If I marry the Mother of God I might be able to continue my quest for knowledge and in addition defeat Mephistopheles.

1 The concept of an imagined encounter between Oedipus and Faust is from Edwin Friedman in Friedman’s Fables (The Guilford Press, N.Y., 1990) in a short story called ‘Interlude’.