Et incarnatus est / Shĕhu yode’ă‘

In our last post we discussed the third movement of the Credo of Bach’s B minor Mass, the Et in unum Dominum, a profession of faith in the mysterious origin and nature of Christ. We saw how Sara Levy supplied it with a Hebrew text, transforming it into a Jewish profession of faith in the oneness and transcendence of God.

The material of the next three movements of the  Credo — Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection — was even more challenging to Sara’s Judaizing efforts. There is nothing in the basic tenets of Judaism that resembles these doctrines; and Bach’s music dramatizes them in very specific ways. I hope you will agree that Sara found satisfactory solutions for this part of the Mass, even if her Jewish version is not as powerful as the Christian original.

Let us begin with the Et incarnatus est. Here is the Latin text:

Et incarnatus est de Spiritu sancto ex Maria Virgine; et homo factus est. (And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary; and was made man.)

The music of the Et incarnatus est is for five-part chorus, unison violins, and continuo, in the key of B minor. It creates, according to Stauffer (The Mass in B minor, p. 116), “an atmosphere of anticipation” of the Crucifixion. The pulsating continuo bass line is similar to those Bach used in his Passions, to portray the drama leading up to the Crucifixion, and in the Crucifixus movement which follows the Et incarnatus est. The jagged descending motive in the violins is similar to those used in Passion music to represent Christ’s suffering. The syncopated, sighing eighth notes in the violins are joined by descending vocal lines, which portray the descent of Christ to earth.

Furthermore, the harmonic modulation leading from “de Spiritu sancto” to “ex Maria Virgine” reappears at the end of the Crucifixus and in the bridge leading from the Confiteor to the Et expecto resurrectionem, symbolically linking the Incarnation and the Crucifixion with the resurrection of the dead.

How did Sara manage to fit this music to a Jewish text? My speculation is that she heard something in this movement other than Christ’s descent to earth and the anticipation of his crucifixion. What I suspect she heard was, rather, the descent of the Holy Spirit into the Virgin’s womb.

The atmosphere created by the music, as I hear it, is not one of anticipation.  In the sounds of this short but hauntingly beautiful movement, I sense mystery (Et incarnatus est…), miraculousness (de Spiritu sancto…), swelling (ex Marin Virgine…), and birth (et homo factus est). The music seems to me to paint the moment of Christ’s conception, his growth in the Virgin’s womb, and his being born into the physical world.

This may be incorrect from the point of view of the traditions of Mass and Passion settings, and it may not be what Bach intended. But, if Sara experienced this movement as I do, it would explain how she was able to match it with one of Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith.

Sara’s Hebrew text reads as follows:

Shĕhu yode’ă‘ mă‘ăṣe v’ne adam ṿ’khŏl-măḥsh’vot libam. (That He knows the deeds of human beings, and all their inner thoughts.)

The Latin text can be divided into four phrases of approximately the same length; they are matched up with the corresponding Hebrew phrases as follows:

Et incarnatus est                     Shĕhu yode’ă‘

de Spiritu sancto                     mă‘ăṣe v’ne adam

ex Maria Virgine,                     ṿ’khŏl-maḥsh’vot libam,

et homo factus est.                  kŏl-maḥsh’vot libam.

Note that in order to fill out the music, Sara repeats the third phrase at the end, but without the prefixed ṿaṿ (ṿ’), which means “and” in this phrase.

If we want to transfer the musical painting to the Hebrew text, we can imagine God’s knowledge descending to earth and the mystery of His connection with humanity (Shĕhu yode’ă‘…, “That He knows…”), the miraculousness of His knowledge of our actions (mă‘ăṣe v’ne adam…, “the deeds of human beings…”), the swelling recesses of the human mind (ṿ’khŏl-maḥsh’vot libam…, “and all their inner thoughts…”), and the creative energy of the mind as it gives birth to ideas (kŏl-maḥsh’vot libam, “all their inner thoughts”).

Since we are dealing here with Maimonides’ conception of Divine Providence, I should tell you what he says on the subject in his Guide for the Perplexed. I very much enjoyed my excursion into this great work in my last post. The fact that Maimonides knows everything, and is so brilliant, reconciles me to his seeming arrogance, both intellectual and moral.

In Part III, Chapter XVII of the Guide, Maimonides presents the five theories concerning Divine Providence:

Theory 1. There is no Providence at all; this is the theory of Epicurus.

Theory 2. Everything in human affairs is due to chance: God controls the celestial spheres, while individuals, acting according to their intellectual and physical endowments, are subject to accident; this is the theory of Aristotle, who sees no difference between the falling of a leaf or stone and the death of good and noble people in a sinking ship.

Theory 3. Human affairs are determined by Divine Will alone: everything is decreed in advance by God, nothing is due to chance; this is the theory of the Ashariyah Muslims, who admit that man has no power to do a certain thing or to leave it undone, and that God may properly afflict the innocent and do good to the sinner.

Theory 4. Human affairs are determined by Divine Wisdom alone: God knows everything in advance, all His acts are due to His wisdom, and man has limited free will; this is the theory of the Mu‘tazila school of Muslims, who believe that the slaughter of the pious is compensated by an increase in their reward in the world to come.

Theory 5. Man’s will is perfectly free, and it is the eternal Will of God that all living beings should act freely according to their capacities, and that rational beings should come under Divine Providence, which examines all their deeds in order to reward or punish them according to justice; this is the theory of Moses, the Prophets, and the Jewish sages, who believe that every human affliction is the punishment for some sin, and every pleasure is the reward for some good action, according to the strict judgment of God, whose judgment admits no wrong, though we are ignorant of its working.

This last theory, of course, is the one Maimonides accepts. He understands it quite literally: “Even when a person suffers pain in consequence of a thorn having entered his hand, although it is at once drawn out, it is a punishment that has been inflicted on him [for sin], and the least pleasure he enjoys is a reward [for some good action].”

I do not dispute that Maimonides accurately represents the traditional, orthodox Jewish conception of Divine Providence; he proves it convincingly in this chapter of the Guide with quotes from the Bible and Talmud. But I find it hard to accept that such a notion, which flies in the face of experience, can be accepted by someone as intelligent as Maimonides, and by subsequent generations of rabbis, many of great intelligence, if not his equal. This conception of Divine Providence led the rabbis to believe that both Jewish Temples were destroyed because of the sins of Israel: the first because of the sins of idolatry, licentiousness, and murder (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 9b); the second because of the neglect of the important precept not to embarrass a fellow Jew in public (as shown in the story of Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa, recounted in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 55b-56a). The rabbis’ initial reaction to the Shoah, quite naturally, was the same: Israel was being punished for some modern form of neglect of the Law.

How does Maimonides explain the torture and death of the great Rabbi Akiva at the hands of the Romans? How does he explain the suffering and death of innocent children, of innocent communities? With all that he wrote about the metaphorical nature of the descriptions of God’s attributes in the Bible and in rabbinic literature, did it never occur to him that prophetic and rabbinic descriptions of divine retribution could be metaphors for the abstract moral law that we believe exists outside of us, and which we strive to follow, even though we know that our good conduct does not protect us from suffering? A pity that Maimonides could not read Kant!

Finally, I must mention the book of Job, which, in my view, gives a more realistic picture of Divine Providence than the rest of the Bible. I ignore, or take as metaphorical, the opening part of the book in which Satan challenges God to test Job, and the final section in which Job’s fortunes are magically restored. In the poetic sections of the book, Job rages at God, although he does not turn away from Him. Job has discovered the truth, that the righteous can suffer the greatest affliction. He curses his own existence, and demands an explanation from God. Job’s three friends offer him conventional wisdom, and counsel him to examine his sins. But Job knows he is right, and stands his ground; he violently rejects their shallow moralizing. In the end, God rebukes the three friends and declares that Job has spoken rightly. Job’s only fault was not to recognize the insignificance of man in relation to God, whose ways are beyond human understanding.

If God afflicts a pious person, we have no right to assume the person has sinned, or has not sinned. We have no right to assume the person will be rewarded in a future life, or not. We have no right to assume that piety is its own reward, or not. We have no right to assume anything when it comes to Providence.

I admit that my interpretation of Job does not agree with mainstream Jewish thought, and it is proper that our Prayer in B minor should follow the orthodox line of Maimonides. And it is just as well that we had this discussion, as the doctrines of the next two movements of Bach’s Gloria, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, are going to be replaced, in the Jewish version, by the two complementary aspects of divine providence that we have been discussing: the punishment of sinners, and the reward of the pious. This will round out our presentation of Divine Providence in the Jewish version of the Credo, which so far has only professed faith in God’s perfect knowledge of the deeds and thoughts of humans.

I am anticipating my next next two posts. But for now, you may freely choose, or not, to listen to the Et incarnatus est while following the Hebrew version of the score, Shĕhu yode’ă’. To listen to an appropriately mysterious rendition of this movement by Blomstedt, click on Et incarnatus est.