The Apotheosis of Nullity by Bartosz Lubczonok

Author:Bartosz Lubczonok
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang AG
Published: 2017-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

His death-struggle now commenced, cold sweat in his every limb. Raising his head, and crying out in a loud voice that pierced the surrounding silence, he spake thus:135

“It is consummated. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”136

He bowed down his head and died.137 All of nature wore a garb of mourning.138

73 A.D. (The Jews of Masada)

When the Judaeo-Roman war was nearing its final denouement and all of Judaea had been reduced to near-total impotence, only one fortress was still holding out: Masada. Occupied by the Sicarii under the command of one Eleazar—descendant of the infamous Galilaean rebel Judas, the fortress sat upon a massive rock broken off on all sides by deep ravines from whose bottom rose sheer cliffs so vertiginous that the summit was accessible only via an agonizing march along a narrow path, the slightest slip upon which meant instant death in the unfathomable abyss directly below.139 Notwithstanding, before long the dauntless Romans under Flavius Silva were mounting their seige. Having swarmed up the White Cliff rocky projection like termites, forged a colossal earthen platform, a pier of massive stones and a huge tower clad with iron plates from whence huge stones pelted and drove off Jewish defenders; and after having bludgeoned one defensive wall with a massive ram and incinerated another; the Romans were finally poised for assaulting the fortress the next morning. Having beheld to his horror how a hitherto favorable northern wind had rapidly swung south and thus—as if through divine intervention—steered the ← 519 | 520 → Roman’s flaming volleys onto the very wall that his men had constructed in the face of such encroachment, Eleazar resolved that God’s will had turned against the Jews and had moreover marked his people for terminal destruction.140

The eventual mass suicide of the Jews of Masada that would inevitably follow is regarded by the document Sefer Yosippon as a burnt offering aimed at pleasing God. “They gathered their wives, sons, and daughters to slay them to the ground. They will be considered a burnt offering (qorban olah) before God, because for His Name they went, not to be killed before the Romans.”141 Their wilful self-destruction would thus coincide with sacrifice to the Deity. The same text likewise views this self-sacrifice as a pure act of mutual and reciprocal love between God and the collective Israelite subject, wherein God grants out of his boundless love for his people the opportunity to suffer the death of martyrdom whilst Israel accepts the said divinely bestowed gift out of love for him. The final act of self-willed collective terminal annihilation in the black hole of stochastic death exemplifies an absolute love for God, a love that of its very nature exceeds and transcends the fear of death.142 Needless to say, this love likewise of its very nature courts death.

The same sentiments are to be found in the Scroll of Ahimaatz, where the qorban (sacrifice) symbol dominates the notion of martyrdom. Here, self-fulfilment can only be attained through self-sacrifice, the latter being the highest spiritual experience.

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