HOME
johndbrey@gmail.com
© 2017 John D. Brey.

An internet respondent:

A Nobel Prize is awarded for years of work and contribution to the betterment for the lives of all. Regardless of their religion or race, people who get them are showing a lot more of what humanity should be about than those who stampede like a herd of cattle.

Three and one half millennia before the statement above was written, Moses produced this little meme from Genesis chapter 12:

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

The Nobel Prize is given to people who spend years working on and perfecting ways to bless the human race. Winners of the Nobel Prize are trying to better the human race, and in many cases are succeeding.

. . . But the pertinent question is: do memes feedback into genes?

Moses produced a meme almost four-thousand years ago that said through Abraham's offspring all the world would be blessed. Today, Abraham's biological offspring make up only two-tenths of one percent of the world population but account for over 20% of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded. Though I don't know the percentage of the Jews winning the Nobel Prize that are orthodox Bible believers, I think it would be fair to suggest that less than half of them are bible believers. Which would mean that non-religious Jews suck up 10% of all Nobel Prizes therein implying that memes do in fact feedback into genes.

But the story gets weirder when we move from Genesis chapter 12 to chapter 17. In Genesis chapter 17 we read of a mysterious covenant God makes with Abraham distinct from his biological offspring. In Genesis chapter 17 God makes a covenant that claims God will make Abraham exceedingly fruitful. Jewish exegetes are clear that this covenant with Abraham is not about his biological offspring, but his metaphysical offspring, his memetic offspring.

Genesis chapter 17 says God will make Abraham exceedingly fruitful. His metaphysical offspring will "exceed" all other offspring.

Approximately 20% of Nobel Prizes go to Abraham's biological offspring even though they make up only two tenths of one percent of the world population. . . . What about the other 80% of Nobel Prizes? -----As fate would have it nearly all the Nobel Prizes that aren't won by Jews are won by Christians. Jews and Christians make up something like 98% of all the Nobel Prizes ever awarded.

God first promises Abraham (Genesis 12) that through his biological offspring all the world will be blessed. And sure enough that tiny slice of the world population (Abraham's biological offspring) account for 20% of Nobel Prizes. ---- God then tells Abraham about a new covenant (Genesis  17) that will make him the father of the world's first memetically conceived ethnicity (the first ethnicity conceived without the use of the phallus) and claims that his memetic offspring will "exceed" all other ethnicities that ever were or will be.

While Abraham's biological offspring are far from exceedingly fruitful, as they make up only a tiny sliver of world population, Abraham's non-phallic, his memetic offspring (born-again through memes rather than semen and genes) exceed all ethnic groups throughout the world. Approximately 30% of world population are Christian (i.e., the non-phallic seed of Abraham) and this number exceeds all other races or ethnicities throughout the world.

Abraham's biological offspring suck up 20% of the Nobel Prizes, and his memetic offspring clean up most of the rest.

Twenty percent of Nobel Prizes are won by Abraham's phallic offspring, those associated genetically with Abraham. . . But the other 80% are won by another Abrahamic people; the ones who become sons of Abraham not through the phallus, but by means of the Abrahamic-meme: a fatal scar marking the organ associated with genetic rather than memetic reproduction.

It’s surprising that this cogent point seems so little appreciated. The phallus has almost always been the sign and signifier, indeed the very flesh, associated with "offspring," lineage, and patrilineal privilege. And Abraham has his own patrilineal heritage, a glorious one, represented by those people who suck up 20% of Nobel Prizes. But God establishes a new covenant with Abraham; one that no less than Rashi, and Rabbi Hirsch, with many others, point out can't really be read to be talking about his phallic-offspring, his natural paternity, his patrilineal heritage.

Rashi, Rabbi Hirsch, and many others, show that if you apply a strong exegesis to Genesis 17, it's not talking about Abraham's natural paternity, but a supernatural people.

So what's the sign of the new covenant to Abraham, the covenant directed at supernatural progeny? And what does the "sign" of the new covenant signify?

Well, what's a "sign" in the first place if not a meme? And how fortuitous would it be if the "sign" of the new covenant to Abraham, the "meme" of the new covenant to Abraham, was placed over the old flesh of Abraham, and a particular flesh at that: the very flesh through which non-memetic offspring come (literally, figuratively speaking).

Could anything be more perfect than to place a meme signifying non-phallic offspring over the very flesh that produces phallic-offspring in order to signify non-phallic offspring? -----What would that meme be? ----A scar -----produced by the central element of bris milah . . . the drawing of blood . . . which, blood, in Jewish symbolism, signifies death.

Abraham's natural offspring don't fulfill the promise of "exceedingly fruitful offspring" since they’re a tiny percentage of the world's population. But when God produces an Abrahamic-meme, i.e., the scaring of the producer of his natural offspring (who are not exceedingly fruitful), the world comes to experience the first ethnicity born not of the desire of a father, or his flesh, but through a meme; a meme given to Abraham, i.e., the scaring of the gene-machine, as a prophetic representation of the coming meme-machine.

Fast-forward to a Jewish boy whose parents swear he’s not born through the phallic-line of Abraham and yet is the offspring of David (through both his mother and father). This Jewish boy, born through the blood of the phallus, its death, has become the Abrahamic progenitor of the most fruitful ethnicity the world has, or ever will, know.  

While Abraham's natural offspring suck up 20% of the Nobel Prizes, his memetic offspring, born of the meme manufactured by scaring of the phallus, clean up the remaining 80% and make up the largest ethnic group the world has ever known or will ever know (Philippians 3:3).

This particular group has the quasi-phallic symbol of their lineage dangling between their breasts: "Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death . . ." (Psalm 8:6). This splendid ornament symbolizes that love, true love, the kind that produces true offspring for God, is stronger than death. A dead quasi-phallic emblem dangles between the breast of his lover and yet this dead organ, ornament, is exceedingly virile, super-productive. It's fathered the largest ethnicity the world will ever know. It's worn between the breasts from the ends of the earth, calling all who see it to the New Jerusalem; the Jerusalem whose inhabitants are born after the death of old Jerusalem, and even the death of the organ that produced the inhabitants of the old Jerusalem.

The children born during your bereavement will say in our hearing, "This place [old Jerusalem] is too small for us; give us more space to live in." Then you will say in your heart, "Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren" I was exiled and rejected."

Isaiah 49:20-21.

A bundle of bitter anguish [mar] is my wellbeloved unto me; He shall lie [in repose] all night betwixt my breasts . . . like a seal over my heart showing that love is stronger than death.

Song 1:12; 8:6.

Who would believe our report? To whom has this arm of the Lord been revealed? That a yod (the emblem of circumcision) should lie in repose between the breast of the beloved in the name Shaddai שד–י? Who could believe the report that states the ornament of ornaments is "glory" per, or par (peh-alef-reish) between two crosses (the ktav ivri tav)? Who could believe that the greatest ornament that will ever be, the ornament par-excellent, marks the end of the phallus, and that this glorification of death (the crucifix dangling between the shad, the breast, the yod of shaddai, the yid of God) has produced, in its emblematic death, the most exceedingly fruitful ethnicity that has ever been or ever will be. 

Under Paul, beliefs became the focal points for movements that, freed of genetic anchors, could sweep across the face of the world, gathering humans of all kinds within their grasp. For when Paul separated genes and gods, he helped unleash a force that would bring together superorganismic groupings on a scale the world had never seen. He helped make the meme the world's most powerful form of replicator.

Harold Bloom, The Lucifer Principle.

God told Abraham his natural posterity would bless the world, and they have. But he said something that has much more bearing on the present. He said that Abraham would be the father of a supernatural people, super-Jews, who, unlike his natural sons, would be born unnaturally (Gal. 4:19-21).

What's the nature of the supernatural birth? God answers that in an amazing way. Since he's going to raise up a people born of memes instead of genes, he has Abraham create a fleshly meme (a "sign" cut into genes/flesh) that only the daftest of daft interpreters could ever miss. He has him place a scar on the organ through which his, and everyone else's, natural offspring come (so to say).

This scar, this meme, like the very Torah scroll itself, is carried, produced, reproduced, painstakingly, for hundreds of years before the birth it prophesies comes into the world. The scar, the meme of the new covenant to Abraham, is eschatological. It predicts a new people will come on the scene and take over the world.

Abraham's natural offspring were the amanuenses who produced, reproduced, protected and distributed the meme prophesying the coming of a new covenant and a new Abrahamic people. Unfortunately, like many others, his natural offspring were unable to read the meme. They were only the producers and reproducers of the meme until the receivers of the meme appeared, the first being Jesus of Nazareth.

On the way to Jerusalem, for his bar mitzvah, Jesus was given a revelation from his mother. He was born before she knew a man. He was born without a phallus. . . All the way to Jerusalem for his bar mitzvah Jesus meditated on what his mother had just told him.

When he got to Jerusalem he disappeared. Nowhere to be found. When he was finally found he was preaching the very ideas being expressed here to the experts in the law. They were dumbfounded concerning how he made sense of the circumcision scar and other rituals that the experts in the law thought were inscrutable, chukkim, stuff to be ignored until Messiah arrives, who, Messiah, by Jewish tradition, will make sense of odd decrees like circumcision and the scar it leaves.

All of Abrahamic descent descend from the same phallus. With one phallus, Abraham fathered all the people of the book, Arabs, Jews, Christians.

Before God turned his phallus into a memetic tool (so to say) Abraham fathered Ishmael. Ishmael is conceived through Abraham's uncircumcised phallus. Then Abraham cuts the scar into his flesh and father's Isaac. Lastly, Jesus interprets the scar, after his mother reveals to him (as part of his bar mitzvah) that he was conceived before she knew a man, and Jesus transforms the scar (the meme of a scarred and bleeding phallus) into a reproductive organ in its own rite (bris milah as stated in Philippians 3:3).

With the scar of Abraham, Jesus fathers the most exceedingly fruitful Abrahamic ethnicity of the three.

To make sure that no one mistakes the power of the scar replacing the phallus, Jesus dies before he uses his phallus, and becomes a scar on Abraham's natural posterity (the crucifix) a stumbling block around the neck of many Jews that cause their natural born brothers to stumble. An offense, mar (mem-reish) worn between the breasts (Song 1:13; Isa. 60:16) of super-Jews that inadvertently causes natural born Jews to stumble.