Germano GALVAGNO

Sulle vestigia di Giacobbe.

Le riletture sacedotali e post-sacerdotali dell’itinerario del patriarca

Analecta Biblica 178

Editrice GREGORIAN & BIBLICAL PRESS
2009, pp. 391.

Quali differenze intercorrono, in termini stilistici e ideologici, tra la narrazione sacerdotale (P) e l’attività redazionale post-sacerdotale (post P) all’interno del ciclo di Giacobbe (Gn 25,19 – 35,29)?

A confronto con la rilettura riservata dalla tradizione P alla figura e alla vicenda di Giacobbe sono posti una serie di interventi redazionali non P (Gn 28,13ab-15.20-22; 31,3.10-13; 32,10-13), eterogenei rispetto allo sviluppo dell’intreccio e interessati a condizionare la comprensione dell’itinerario del patriarca.

Le differenze rilevabili tra le due prospettive a proposito della formulazione delle promesse divine, della menzione della triade patriarcale e di tratti specifici dell’itinerario considerato consentono di riconoscere il carattere post P dei testi non P. Inoltre, la percezione dell’articolazione diacronica di queste due riletture dell’itinerario di Giacobbe permette di riconoscere le principali metamorfosi cui andò soggetta l’antica figura dell’antecessore eponimo nel post-esilio.

La duplice rilettura dell’itinerario del patriarca, infatti, riflette due periodi successivi dell’epoca post-esilica. La tradizione P esprime il tentativo delle prime ondate di rimpatriati di coinvolgere quanti erano rimasti nella terra in una nuova fondazione dell’identità di Israele. Stante il fallimento di tale tentativo, le riletture post P dell’itinerario di Giacobbe (e di altri itinerari patriarcali) segnalano l’imporsi dell’egemonia dei rimpatriati in terra di Canaan: solo quanti avevano ripercorso le orme dell’antico patriarca erano il “vero Israele”, beneficiario delle promesse divine.

Germano Galvagno, nato nel 1968, dal 1993 è presbitero della chiesa di Torino. Dopo aver conseguito la licenza in scienze bibliche presso il Pontificio Istituto Biblico di Roma nell’anno 2000, nel medesimo Istituto ha difeso la sua dissertazione dottorale nel 2008. Attualmente è docente di Sacra Scrittura presso la sezione torinese della Facoltà Teologica dell’Italia settentrionale.

“And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking.” Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The “perceiving of the voices” has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca.

“One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds,” he says.

Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says.

“I have no direct proof of this interpretation,” and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, “it seems logical that something was altered in people’s consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.”

Shanon, former head of the Hebrew University psychology department, said his first experience with ayahuasca was in 1991 when he was invited to a religious ceremony in the northern Amazon in 1991 in Brazil.

“I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” he says.

Since that time, he has used it hundreds of times, and has published a book about the plant.

“Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials,” Shanon says. He believes the Israelites used two plants in Sinai and the Negev: one of them is wild rue, a hallucinogen used by the Bedoin to this day. However this plant is not identified with any plant mentioned in the Bible.

The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, Shanon says, which the Israelites could have used. The acacia is mentioned frequently in the Bible, and was the type of wood of which the Ark of the Covenant was made. According to Shanon, he drank a potion prepared from a species of acacia while he was in South America, which caused similar experiences to those produced by the ayahuasca.

Shanon also sees signs of a hallucinogenic vision in the story of the burning bush. “Moses ‘looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed,’” Shanon quotes from Exodus 3:2. Time passes differently when under the influence of the plant, he notes. “That’s why Moses thought the bush was not consumed. It should have been burned in the time he thought had passed. And in that time, he heard God speaking to him.”

“But not everyone who uses a plant like this brings the Torah,” Shanon concedes. “For that, you have to be Moses”.

Fonte: HaAretz 04.03.2008

The Sanctuary of Silence
by Israel Knohl

Eisenbrauns 2007

Israel Knohl offers a new perspective on the history and theology of the Priestly source of the Pentateuch. By means of an analysis of specific texts–for example, those that deal with the Sabbath and the Festivals–Knohl demonstrates the existence of two separate Priestly sources, loosely speaking, the two sources that we have referred to as P and the Holiness Code. The “Holiness School” is shown to have been active subsequent to the school that produced the Priestly Torah and, in fact, to … (more)