Speaker 1: I want to give you an example of symbolic interpretation
and how symbolic interpretation is far superior than sometimes what
we call literal descriptions or historically accurate descriptions. And this
is actually a little bit of a pet peeve of mine,
so I'll have to hold back not to fall into
a rant mode. This is Jonathan Peeshel, Welcome to the
symbolic world. For example, in the movie The Passion, which
I really like, actually, I think in terms of narrative,
it's a very powerful It's one of the best narratively
driven stories of Christ that I've ever seen. But there's
this annoying detail in the movie, and it's one that
comes from this kind of desire to be historically accurate,
and it is the idea that Christ is nailed to
the cross through his wrists. And this has kind of
infected Christian thinking. You see it in now representation. Sometimes
in paintings and statues, you'll see Christ with the nail
going through his wrists. Now, from the very beginning of Christianity,
in every representation of the crucifixion, we show the nail
that is being planted through Christ's hands, and this has
been the traditional along and then sometime in the nineteen fifties,
some doctor, you know, a you know, a actually doctor said, well,
you couldn't have the nails go through the hands because
you know, if you put the nail through the hand,
then you know, the nail would rip through the hand
because it's too fragile. But if you put the nail
through the wrist, then you know, the bones here on
the wrist would hold the nail together, and therefore it
would make more sense, you know, logically and medically that
whether that Jesus would have been nailed through his wrists.
And so people go, oh, you know, because the word
for hand, you know that's used in the Bible is
a word this general that could mean hand, could mean forum,
couldn't mean risk, you know. And the Christians, of course,
you know, showed that the nail went through the hands,
and so you could say, well, you know, then it's
plausible that you know that this is what would have
been done, because you put the nail through the wrist
of the crucified one. And you know, this is really
where you see how modern kind of materialists mechanical explanations
just go completely awry because and how people really completely
invert the order of meaning in a way that is
extremely annoying because what the person ends up saying it's
something like this. The word hand means all of this here, right,
and so because scientifically, and to be historically accurate, it
would not be possible for the nail to be put
through the hand. Therefore, what that word probably means. What
it means when it says that he that they put
a nail through his hand, is that they put the
nail through the wrist. And that's what that means. And
so now we know, because we're scientists and we're so
good at, you know, mechanical causes, now we know that
what it means in the Bible that Christ was crucified
through his hands is that he was crucified through his wrist,
because that's how you could hold someone up on across.
And of course this is really if you want to
understand an image of the inversion of symbolism, this is it.
In truth, it is the very opposite of what it
is that meaning, how meaning functions, and what it is
that these things are taught talking about, which is that
human beings don't care about their wrists. Human beings care
about their hands. Hands are an extension of the human
person in it. You know, after the face, the hand
is where the human person exists the most. It's the
things you use to make and to hold things, and
to hold your friends and to caress your wife. This
is where the human person exists in the hands, you know,
when it talks about you know, God, you know, using
his hands, holding us in his hands. All of these
images are related to the fact that the human experience
of meaning is through the hands, not through the wrists.
The risks have very little meaning in human experience. Hands
have insane amounts of meaning. They hold so much meaning
because they are, you know, one of the largest expressions
of human action. And it's the same with the feet.
And so you could say, well, they couldn't have nailed
it through his feet for the same reason. So they
nailed it through his you know, through the top part
where the ankle meets with the bone. That's where they
would have nailed it so that his feet would hold
to the cross. And again it's the same thing. Your ankle,
you know, that part of you has very little meaning
in your life, but your feet have a lot of
meaning because they take you places when you want to
direct your gaze and you want to go somewhere. Your
feet are what you feel touching the ground as you
move forward. They are like the hands, not as much
as the hands, but they are like the hands the
place where humans find meaning and human experience the world,
you know, and so those are the places of meaning
and those that is why, from the very beginning of
Christianity it was completely normal and completely coherent that his
hands were nailed, because his hands are that by which
he did things, and therefore to nail them on the cross,
and to nail them so that they couldn't act anymore
so that they could create, so that they couldn't make,
is an image of his pouring out, This image of
the God who created the cosmos, having his hands nailed
to the board, having his NaNs hailed to the wall,
in an act of complete emptying of himself, you know,
into the world, and sacrificing everything that he had and
everything that he was. That makes sense, and as a
human person, you would understand what it would mean to
have pain in your hands, and that your hands be
prevented from acting and prevented from doing things. That is
that all of that has meaning. Your wrists have very
little meaning, and so when you look at the story
of the crucifixion, you could you have to reverse the
way that the modern actually thinker talks about it. You
would say, is it possible that if I was there
in the first century, you know that this is where
the nail would have gone? And the answer is yeah, maybe,
And what does that mean? That means that he nailed
him in his hands? The meaning goes the other way.
The meaning is that if he's nailed in his wrists,
The meaning of it is that he was nailed in
his hands. That is the important part, because you could
reduce everything to like millimeters and centimeters. Well, if he
nailed it in his hand, did he nailed it closer
to the wrist or closer to the fingers? How many
centimeters from the wrists would you have to nail the
nail so that the hand holds, and how many centimeters
from the fingers, And then you could find the most
precise possible place in the wrist. You know, if you
nail it here, it does solid. Or if you nail
it here, how far in the forearm would you have
to put the nail so that the person holds on
on the cross. This is not what it's important. What
is important is what it means. And therefore if the
Roman soldier nailed and maybe you know who knows, maybe
nailed it in different places on the different hands, because
it didn't really care, it doesn't matter. When you make
a representation, you represent it in meaning. That is what
a representation is. For the reason why you would want
to represent something in a movie, the reason why you
want to represent something in a painting, the reason why
you want to represent it in a book is because
it has meaning, and therefore you have to represent it
in meaning. And so if you have a choice between
showing a nail going through the wrist and showing a
nail going through the hand, you put it in the hand,
because that's the reason why you're representing it in the
first place. Is to signify, is to kind of compress
things towards their meaning and not towards the idiosyncrasy of
the moment, or to just the kind of let's say,
practical underpinning, mechanical underpinnings of how something happened. And that is,
of course everything about scripture is like that. That is
why there is no attempt, no desire to exp what's
mechanically happening during the miracles, you know, and the miracles
don't mean the mechanical things. There's no reason to try
to explain the mechanical causes of the miracle. At least,
there's very little reason to it. I mean, I can't.
I guess you can imagine a moment where it's kind
of interesting to think about that, But it's definitely should
never become the central question. It should never become the
thing that interests you the most. The thing that interests
you the most is the meaning, because the meaning is
the reason why you represent something, and the meaning is
the reason why you remember it. And so this of
course feeds into all kinds of things, you know, to
all kinds of things, and the way in which we
remember things, and the way in which we represent things
when they move towards meaning. We shouldn't freak out. We
shouldn't say, well, you know, to be historically accurate and
to be you know, to be scientifically accurate, we should
represent things this way. This is most often a mistake,
because if you move towards detail, and you move toward idiosyncrasy,
and you move towards something that is just showing the
mechanical causes something. One of the things you're doing is
that you're moving away from the meaning. You know, and
of course there has to be an interplay between the two.
You know, there has to be a way in which
these things are connected together, because the world manifests itself
in meaning. You know, this is not arbitrary. Why you
would want to nail someone's hands to the board so
that he can't grab on to the soldiers, so that
he can't try to free himself, so that he can't
try to get off the cross. You can kind of
understand why you would do that, but then you also
have to understand what it means and what it means
to the people watching, and when it means to the
people seeing that this person has been immobilized in the
in him, in his action right, he's been pinned down
by the authority so that he can no longer be
free and he can longer act on his own. So
this was just a this was really just a small note,
a little rant that is not very long, but to
kind of help you think about symbolism and to you know,
maybe you can think about other examples where this has happened.
You know, I sadly, you know, well Sadly, I grew
up in a world where this was constantly the case,
where you know, when people trying to think about the
crossing of the Red Sea, they're far more interested in
figuring out, could there be a wind that could push
through and could you know, open up. You know, there's
a part of the Red Sea where the water is
not very deep, where it's only you know, if you
like one foot deep, and if there was a really
strong wind, then you could separate. And they're trying to
figure out and then they forget why it matters. They
forget to think about how the crossing of the Red
Sea is related to baptism, how the crossing of the
Red Sea is related to the creation of the world,
to the end of the flood, to all of these
powerful images that help us understand why this is. This
is the image that God chose, you know, to reveal
to us the transition from an old, dying world to
a new world. We kind of forget that and then
we end up getting focused on the mechanical details. And
so hopefully this will slowly reorient your brain. Slowly, let's say,
you know, kind of put things in the proper order.
But it's something that we forget all the time that
we forget that the reason why we remember and the
reason why we represent is for meanings sake and not
for detailed sake, you know. And if we have to
remember a detail rather than another, it's always because there's
a reason. Because memory is expensive and representation is expensive
in terms of action and in terms of things. And
sometimes you know, and if you're representing, you want it
to be like a bullseye. You want it to be
something like a like a funnel that leads you towards
the reason for that memory and that representation. So hope
this was useful and interesting to you. You look like
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to the audio. And so thanks everyone for your attention,
and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye. I
said I would never do it again, but here we are.
We are announcing the Symbolic World Summit in May twenty
twenty six. I have so many great people around me
that I'm just excited to do it, even though I
thought it would be crazy to do it again.
Speaker 2: Our summit's going to be from May fourteenth through sixteenth
in Broadview Heights, Ohio. You can buy tickets at Symbolic
World Summit dot com. We have early bird pricing going
right now fifty dollars off of general admission and VIP tickets.
Kenot speakers this year are Father Josiah Trenham and doctor
Mary Harrington, which is a combination nobody knew that they wanted,
but I think it's going to be absolutely incredible. And
of course Jonathan and I will be speaking, as well
as several people from around the Symbolic World community.
Speaker 1: A lot of people that you like that you've seen
are going to be there, are going to come. We're
gonna have book signings. It'll be a lot of time
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Supra as well, and so come and join us. We
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