To Catch The Golden Ball Part III
Truly, he died too early that Hebrew
whom the preachers of slow death honor:
and to many has it proved a calamity
that he died too early.
This begins a breath taking assessment of the death of Jesus. Yes Jesus, the Palestinian carpenter condemned as an agitator by the occupying Romans when in his early thirties. Jesus, his death in particular is the centerpiece of Christianity. Nietzsche/Zarathustra offers his analysis: Jesus died prematurely.
As yet had he known only tears,
and the melancholy of the Hebrews,
together with the hatred of the good and just
— the Hebrew Jesus:
Then was he seized
with the longing for death.
A reader has to ask, how is that? Consider the type of experience available to this 30 something male: his native, inherited religious tradition was painfully rule-based, do this and don’t do that. As always the ruling status-quo, decides, “that is good, and that is just” – and Jesus was hated because he offered an improvisational concept of goodness and justice. One more thing. The Jesus story is told to say that he believed that his divine destiny was to die.
Had he but remained in the wilderness,
and far from the good and just!
Then, perhaps,
would he have learned to live,
and love the earth
— and laughter also!
Zarathustra says that Jesus just needed a longer season in solitude, time for himself, time to himself – in the wilderness to think. Time away from the clamor, and the rancor of tightly wound religionists, and the law and order minded Roman authorities. Then, maybe just maybe he would have “learned to live.”
Believe it, my brothers!
He died too early;
he himself would have
disavowed his doctrine
had he attained to my age!
Noble enough was he to disavow!
But he was still immature.
Immaturely loves the youth,
and immaturely also hates he man and earth.
Zarathustra is confident that had Jesus the benefit of additional years, he would have taken into account the brevity of youth, and the link between humankind and the earth.
Confined and awkward
are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.
But in man there is more of the child than in the youth,
and less of melancholy:
he better understands about life and death.
Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer,
when there is no longer time for Yes:
thus understands he about death and life.
Zarathustra notes that in humankind there resides the irrepressible exuberance of a child. In man pessimism is not the dominating note. There is freedom inherent in understanding that life and death are not oppositional. Yes and No are both necessary, and the time comes without any exceptions when each of us must say No. Our time for saying Yes has run out…
That your dying may not be a reproach
to man and the earth,
my friends: I solicit that
from the honey of your soul.
In your dying
shall your spirit and your virtue
still shine
like an evening after-glow
around the earth:
otherwise your dying has been unsatisfactory.
Zarathustra/Nietzsche makes his ultimate appeal which I paraphrase: Do everything you can to choose a timely death!
Thus will I die myself,
that you friends
may love
the earth more for my sake;
and earth will I again become,
to have rest in her that bore me.
Truly, a goal had Zarathustra;
he threw his ball.
Now be you friends the heirs of my goal;
to you throw I the golden ball.
Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball!
And so I ll remain a little while on the earth
— pardon me for it!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, Voluntary Death No. 21
4 thoughts on “To Catch The Golden Ball Part III”
There is a religiosity in the testimony of Zarathustra that I find odd, for is he not the fictional embodiment of Nietzsche and therefore representative of Nietzsche himself? Perhaps I have misinterpreted. I view Nietzsche’s words as someone struggling with the concept of Christ but at the same time acknowledging the divine qualities of someone who, in actuality, may have been a fictional character themselves. The books of Luke, John, Paul, et al, were written several lifetimes after the supposed life of Christ, time enough to have the stories become myth more than fact. The character we refer to as Christ did not have a Plato as a companion, someone who knew him and chronicled his philosophy in writing in real time, at least that’s my understanding.
So then I wonder if the intention from Nietzsche was to use the myth of Christ as a metaphor. But again, not being a religious scholar on any level, I’m missing the analogous nature of Zarathustra’s story. At our next lunch, perhaps you could give me a refresher course. Thanks!
Zarathustra is the alter ego for Nietzsche. Nietzsche experiments with his ideas, Zarathustra becomes a idealized Nietzsche it seems to me. You have captured the ambivalence which Nietzsche feels towards Jesus a person who disseminated a revolutionary ethic, announcing the advent of God’s rule, etc., etc.. Nietzsche clearly has admiration for Jesus even as he expresses bitterness towards Christianity. It seems paradoxical at first. Yet, as one reads more of what Nietzsche had to say, the more reasonable his estimation becomes. And even more so today.
The Gospel of Mark is recognized to be the earliest of the four Gospels, written around 70 AD, the time of the uprising against Rome. that would have placed Mark within a generation and a half of Jesus.
The seventy years noted with regard to Mark’s gospel is a vastly different seventy years than we would experience today. At that point very little was written down and oral history was passed along by story rather than by a more succinct form of testimony. Even in today’s world where we have historical records, film, and the written words of eyewitnesses, we see how history can become twisted by agenda and speculation. Two thousand years ago it’s impossible to tell how a seventy year period might skew a few pieces of history and turn them into a global phenomenon. Many people believe in the sanctity and literal interpretation of a book that was, in great part, manufactured by Constantine in order to give himself greater control over the population of the Roman Empire. Just a thought.
I do not believe “what happened” is important. In any case there would have been as many versions of “what happened” as there were witnesses. We know that in the earliest days, many mystically flavored communities existed based upon the stories of the crucified God, and all of the Gnostic versions of the gospels were suppressed by the more aggressive “church” which Constantine later adopted as a state religion. What matters, like it or not, Christianity, a Janus faced faith — is the central myth of the West. That and Capitalism.