Daniel Alexander Apatiga
Prof. Lori Branch
Engl: 3140, Sect. 1
Sept. 28th, 2016
Logic,
Magic, and Structure in the Dreams of the Early Prophets
Logic
falls apart in typical dreams, yet the motif of dreams experienced by the early
prophets and VIPs were narrated as logically infallible, realistic visions in
Genesis and Exodus that occurred magically by an entity known as God; these
dreams held hidden symbols within the imagery that would dictate the life of
later individual. Nowadays, dream interpreters are rare, and many people do not
even think about their dreams, or where they come from-generally, we accept
dreams as having a mystical quality. Ironically, society can also preclude
people who allegedly hallucinate, like cultural communities who are labeled
schizophrenics, or hallucinogenic drug junkies. Moreover, uncanny parallels
exist between the future or the past in connection with the narrative of a
dream that has lasting effects on a human being. In terms of theme, the surreal
dreams experienced by the prophets catalyzed change, progress, and sometimes
tragedy. This led the children of Abraham towards the Promised Land where they
became as numerous as the stars.
A "prophetic dream" is like
a naked foreshadow in contemporary art-it conveniently suggests to the eye of
the beholder what will unfold. This evocation, notably, is evidence of a
magical presence to these prophets. And, by magic, we presume it means,
anthropomorphically, that an outside, invisible or otherworldly force, causes
imagery in the dream, mystically. In my essay, I will scrutinize closely the
visions of Abram, who became Abraham, and his sons and how their visions of a
faceless God who would appear in the shape and guise of an unimagined dream.
These dreams were what pushed forward the movement of the narratives. My main
focus of this essay will be the dream Laban has in which God tells him,
supposedly, that he should not speak with Jacob because this would be poisonous
to God's plans. In retelling the dreams that would subsequently come true, I do
not take on faith that the omniscient narrator of Genesis was immortal: he was
immortalized of the spiritual and mystical answers provided by the Scriptures.
(This omniscient narrator was also most likely confined by poetic and oral
tradition, so the many stories were in all likelihood appended on top of each
other.) This prophetic dream of Laban's occurs only once, whereas the sons of
Abraham have dreams in two, noticeably, suggesting that non-Israelites are not
as loved as the aliens:
²² On the third
day Laban was told that Jacob had fled. ²³
So he took his kinsfolk with him and pursued him for seven days until he caught
up with him in the hill country of Gilead.
²⁴ But God came to Laban the Aramean in a
dream by night, and said to him, “Take heed that you say not a word to Jacob,
either good or bad.” (Bible 54).
Structurally, since most of Genesis
and Exodus use symmetrical parallelism in its strophes, this, like fractals,
(where if we were to zoom out, the image of what was before appears
approximately the same), we see that parallels exist in a fractal space that
also occurs in the overall form of the Bible. What is most spellbinding
concerning these macroscopic parallel fractals is that uncanny apparitions of
the past era are relived, which makes me think, to some effect, we must be
reliving the past in a parallel, macroscopic way, whether we are moderately
limited or unnoteworthy to this fatalism, aka., the past history repeats
itself. For instance, microscopically, a sentence is followed by a parallel
sentence that conveys the same meaning except slightly differently, like in
Hebrew Poetry that employs Chiasmus structures. And, macroscopically, we see
that Jacob had twelve sons, and like Jacob, Jesus had twelve apostles.
Furthermore, like Jacob's sons who favor a murdering of Joseph, the apostle
Judah betrays Jesus. (The apostle Judah sells him for 30 silver linings to the
authorities, and similarly, Jacob's son, Judah, sells Joseph to the Ishmaelites
for "20 pieces of silver.") Of course, a lot of time had passed,
events developed, and new characters come and forgotten before this fractal
parallel occurs. So, these parallels naturally led me to a question: if
this omniscient narrator, (because he or she had recounted the Prophets' lives
through many life-spans and who had maintained a similar tone and diction throughout)
had garnered the truth about the dreams, particularly, through whatever means,
are the most lifelike dreams prophetic? Of course, I'm not holy, or a Prophet,
but maybe a missed moral message was left behind by the ancients-that vivid
dreams are extremely important to the future of humankind. Take the Pharaoh's
dream that would be interpreted by Joseph, a son of Abraham:
After two whole
years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, ² and there came up
out of the Nile seven sleek and fat cows, and they grazed in the reed grass. ³
Then seven other cows, ugly and thin, came up out of the Nile after them, and
stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile. ⁴ The ugly and thin
cows ate up the seven sleek and fat cows. And Pharaoh awoke. ⁵
Then he fell asleep and dreamed a second time; seven ears of grain, plump and
good, were growing on one stalk. ⁶ Then seven ears,
thin and blighted by the east wind, sprouted after them. ⁷
The thin ears swallowed up the seven plump and full ears. Pharaoh awoke, and it
was a dream. (Coogan 67).
In this dream, Joseph interprets it
and it is later fulfilled. The dream, like a normal dream, does not make sense;
events do not unfold naturally because time is sped up. In the structure of
this dream, the sentences are not recounted in typical parallelism, but
embellished contrasts make the sentences progress in an alarming way. For
instance, verse four to five have complete opposite images-that of waking up
and that of falling asleep. This occurs symmetrically from the point of the
period with antonyms in retrograde. Joseph suddenly knows that "...the
doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will
shortly bring it about" (Coogan 68). This is not contradicted as far as I
know in the Pentateuch. But how did Joseph come to that conclusion, logically
or magically? He had successfully interpreted the dreams from two separate
people-the cup-bearer and the chief-chef-the dreams of which had similar
characteristics. The dream from the cup-bearer and the dream from the chief
baker were completely opposite yet they uncannily resembled each other:
⁹ So the chief
cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, “In my dream there was a
vine before me, ¹⁰ and on the vine there were three branches.
As soon as it budded, its blossoms came out and the clusters ripened into
grapes. ¹¹ Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them
into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” ¹² Then Joseph said
to him, “This is its interpretation: the three branches are three days; ¹³
within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office;
and you shall place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you
were his cupbearer. (Coogan 66).
¹⁶ When the chief
baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, “I also had
a dream: there were three cake baskets on my head, ¹⁷
and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but
the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.” ¹⁸
And Joseph answered, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three
days; ¹⁹ within three days Pharaoh will lift up
your head—from you!— and hang you on a pole; and the birds will eat the flesh
from you.” (Coogan 67).
Also, it is interesting to note that
these two unimportant persons, the cupbearer and the chief-chef, are later
macroscopically paralleled in the last supper of Jesus where he holds a cup
like the cup-bearer-the holy grail-but his lowly status as the chief-chef
providing to the poor ceases to exist as soon as Jesus is crucified shortly
after the meal. But, Jesus as the cup-bearer is spared death when he is
resurrected, (though he is shortly returned to heaven and God). Jesus dies at
three pm and is for three days dead and then he was resurrected.
The numbers three and two seem
important to one another in terms of structure, and how God magically
communicates in prophetic dreams. Mathematically, two is the first prime number
and is how Joseph knew that they were prophetic dreams: two is the minimum for
the existence of parallelism. Two divides into half the numbers from zero to
infinity. Like the things that are evil and those that are good, each might be
divided into two groups of equal size, since for each good act there is an
opposite, correspondingly evil act. In Pharaoh’s dream, he dreams twice; one of
these dreams is disturbing: a dream that suggests to Joseph seven years of
famine. Interestingly, Pharaoh’s second dream does not occur because Joseph
saves many Egyptian lives by realizing it is a message from God. The number
three plays an important role as aforementioned in prior paragraphs: three
branches, three days before events come to pass for the cupbearer and
chief-chef. How did Joseph logically interpret three branches on a vine as
meaning three days? It is not possible--it is irrational, transcendental, and
unlikely unless God "helped" him. Interestingly, the Bible does not
say God told him specifically that a vine's branch symbolizes a day, rather, he
had extrapolated this from somewhere.
The author of these texts must have
had knowledge about the prophets' dreams first hand unless the stories were
passed down from generation to generation. So what differentiates a commonplace
dream from a prophetic one? In all likelihood, though this is not talked about,
Abraham and his descendants had many dreams that were not recounted because
why? Because they were not prophetic. So what should those dreams mean to the
spiritual individual? And, how does one have knowledge that God is the one who
speaks when a voice in a dream could easily be mistaken for a person? The
mystical is easily demystified in those dreams by the prophets, but of course,
they are prophets. But, the dream's prophecy, consequent interpretation, and
then realization suggests that it has a magical, logical infallibility to it.
Works
Cited
The
New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Edition with Apocrypha. Gen. Ed.
Michael
D. Coogan. Oxford UP, 2010.
