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johndbrey@gmail.com
© 2015 John D. Brey.
johndbrey@gmail.com
© 2015 John D. Brey.
But
how does excluding one gender for a virgin birth in your terminology help if
"the main part of my creation is from a male and a female, both of whom are
full of iniquity" to quote Rashi. . . If God needs a sinless Mary, and an
absent father to produce Jesus, there is neither normal male nor normal female
involved. The whole thing is a charade. It's not "male" that's being
excluded, but "human." In which case, why the convoluted story with
Mary and Joseph at all?
Mary is not sinless since sin infects every cell of every body (save one: the seed of the woman after meiotic cleansing). The female seed throws off half of it's chromosomes in the process that makes the seed of the woman the only cell in the human body that has no sin. The male seed doesn't throw off half of its chromosomes. The splitting in preparation for uniting with the seed of the woman doesn't include any loss as in the case of the seed of the woman. One male seed splits into four semen with no loss of material.
Biologist have struggled to understand why the female seed throws off part of its material. They suggest there doesn't seem to be any purpose to it. But it's the most important process in the entire reproductive system. Without it, Genesis 3:15 would have no fulfillment.
Jewish sages have discussed the difference between circumcision blood versus menstrual blood: one is clean and purifying (circumcision blood) while the other is unclean and contaminating (niddah: menstrual blood).
But why?
In meiotic cleansing, the female seed causes a cross-over of all sin into half of its mass that's thrown of during menstruation. The sin is in the blood that leaves the body with the sinful 23 chromosomes. It's sinful blood: niddah. . . But the ovum is now purified, clean, the only clean cell in the human body. But the male seed doesn't cleanse itself. The male seed remains contaminated with sin. . . So why is circumcision blood clean, and menstrual blood contaminated?
The answer lies in something Rabbi L. Hoffman points out in his book on the covenant of blood. He explains that circumcision blood is not just clean, but a cleaner . . . a cleanser. According to Rabbi Hoffman, it can save. It's salvific. Once it's understood that circumcision blood is salvific, it cleans, cleanses, saves, it becomes apparent why circumcision blood, unlike menstrual blood, is not contaminated with sin. Menstrual blood cleanses the ovum by sacrificing half of its material in meiotic cleansing. Once the sin is in the blood, and the blood is removed from the body, the ovum is pure, and the sin is outside the body (in the menstrual blood).
The male reproductive system cleanses itself from sin simply by allowing the female ovum, purified through menstruation, to remain pure. In other words, the blood of the phallus (circumcision blood) is ritually pure since in the ritual it represents emasculation, which saves the purified ovum from re-contamination. In the two part process, the ovum throws off sin in the menstrual blood, making the blood niddah, contaminated, unclean (infested with sin) . . . while the cutting of the phallus, creating circumcision blood, rather than throwing off sin, throws off the means by which every single ovum but one in human history has been recontaminated after the menstrual cleansing process.
According to many Jewish sages, the difference between menstrual blood and circumcision blood is that menstrual blood is about nature while circumcision blood is under the control of the Jewish male. The controlled nature of circumcision blood, versus the uncontrolled, natural, nature of the blood of the niddah (menstruant) is part and parcel of the reason circumcision blood is good, and menstrual blood bad. This fits nicely with what's being presented since through postlapsarian nature every single birth leads inevitably to death. Without the act of a Jewish male (Abraham) nature would abide in death not just till kingdom come --- since it wouldn't ---- but forever and ever world without end.
The act of a human being --- Abraham --- thwarted death once and for all. Which is to say that by an "un-natural" act ---- symbolically removing an organ designed by god (the ultimate act of antinomian desecration) ----a man, a human being, upset the apple-cart of postlapsarian nature. Abraham symbolically took back from nature what nature stole from man in the Fall. In the Fall nature usurped man's divine authority over nature. Man became subject to nature --- and natural death. But when Abraham took hold of the organ most under control of natural passions, and in an act of Passion, bled it to death, he symbolically ended nature's reign over mankind, returning mankind, symbolically, to the Garden of Eden.
What Abraham accomplished in ritual form, God made real with the birth of the first child born in the actuality of what Abraham performed ritually.
Only through the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth could any one appreciate the ritual purity of circumcision blood. It's ritually pure because in the ritual it represents the end of nature's reign of terror whereby by use of the greatest of passions, nature passes on death over and over again. And this, through the organ most under control of nature's passions.
In the spiritual Passion of Abraham, the blood of nature's favored organ became the mark on the human body signifying the end of nature's reign. The mark became more than merely a ritual mark when the blood Abraham spilled spilled onto the pages of the New Torah, which was written not by the "natural" amanuensis and scribe of God: the firstborn creature who usurped the birth order by coming out of the womb of creation ahead of Adam, but by a son of Adam, a Son of Man, who, is the true Firstborn of God's Creation, the firstfruits of all those who he will rescue from natural death.