I don’t know if I will ever get into the mind of Ivan Illich but I have all the time allotted to me to do so. I am terribly slow because I read acknowledgements and references and look up some that look interesting and will expand a short statement into a fuller understanding. /1
If some of what he conveys in Medical Nemesis I understand as a carrier of the same culture, all of the religious writings are like speaking Chinese for somebody who was raised in an atheist secular country without God. /2
As a small child I dutifully spat in the direction of a church walking past it. Our books had footnotes to explain basic references to biblical stories because we were raised in a complete vacuum of knowledge of prior Christian civilisation. /3
It took me about 100 re-reads of one page of Rivers North of the Future to realise that my understanding lapses at paragraph number one that refers to John 1 of which I had vague knowledge. /4
I get dutifully stuck on John 1 because words don’t take on human form. I even doubt that I understand the meaning of the word “word” so I check it both in Russian and English. I do have a solid understanding of at least this word but the meaning is still not clear. /5
This is how I start tracing between Latin and Greek. Then all is illuminated and starts making sense. It takes weeks if not over a month. /6
Prior to this I spent a month on Good Samaritan parable which included a call to a professor who studied these things for over 40 years to check if what I found checks against larger body of knowledge. /7
I got my wheels spinning for days on “splagchnizomai” - a Greek word denoting the seat of emotions in Ancient Greece. I wound up digging into a book that specifically dealt with body organs at that time in that region as cross referenced by writings at the time. /8
I envy a friend who read the whole Bible in a year. My lot seems dim at my pace. I also envy the men who get to study Torah their whole lives day in and out. /9
Many scholars who professionally study Christianity never pause to think so I get my inner delight when the college professor who initially dismissed my ramblings pauses and smacks his face at the word mercy finishing the Good Samaritan parable. /10
There is no difference for anybody between pity, compassion, love, charity, mercy. It’s all chaos but at that time of writing in context all these words had distinct meanings. Sloppy translations strip meaning of a story. /11
I get a bonus: the professor is a Buddhist now and “life is the most precious thing given to us”. This leaves me frustrated and questioning the meaning of learning that strips you of your faculties at the face of death. I still have no answers. /12
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