o Galilean Oral Style - Pnlcstine pays:.n milieu
lethnic lJ\ilicuIIG:llilccIIWriItCI1-sl~'lcllbooklsl
.lollsse used rhese terms Interchangeably 10 re.fer 10 (ialllee-Po/esline miliell 2000 years ago.
Examples of Usage
• "We will see that the eternal Memra. Sera of dle Abba. will make himself 'flesh and blood', i.e.
anthropos; that this 3nthropos will be specified ethnically as Galilean; that in the Galilean ethnic milieu, he will distinguish himself as a Rabbi, i.e. an instructor, a teacher, and the etemal Word will be incarnated in the tool ofdle ethnic word.
Rabbi h~sholla. the Memra incarnated, is the Word of the All-powerful One Who Speaks:
Dixi' el facIo .Hml m(llulavil el crealn SI/nl.
He spoke and things He ga"c a command and came into being things were created.
111at is the essence of the Memra. So, we will not be astonished to see this incarnated Memra one day saying, 'Let it be!'; not with reference to the light, but to the bread: 'Let it be flesh"; and to the wine, 'Let it be blood"; and he will say to his apprchenders: 'Prehend (take) and eat... Prehend and drink ...
Continue to perfonn this synthesis of coherent perfection. '" (Jousse 2000:581)
• "The exceptional blossoming of Mimismological Anthropology in the Palestinian paysan milieu is of considerable interest for the methodological development of this very new scientific study of the human mechanism. This interest is currently growing strongly in proportion to the dependence of the future role of religion in our civilization on the thorough understanding of the objective or analogical meaning of the great Palestinian explicative Mimodramas. Depending on the scientific attitude we adopt toward them, these Mimodramas can be either a really sound source of anthropological enhancement, or merely a futile poetic diversion. '" (Jousse 2000:389)
• "Some thinkers have spoken to us about the philosophy of pulverulence (desiccation and disintegration),
a very secondary and artificial study. In the Palestinian paysan milieu, the anduopology of the dust of the earth was a spontaneous, inevitable, enduring study: the earthlingMman was expressed by the earth and the earth expressed the eartJ,ling-man. But how difficult it is to understand all the mimodramatic expressions of the earthlingMlllan and ofdle earth, given d,e infinite, essential nuances of objectivism and analogism! And how impossible it is to translate all d,e mimodramatic expressions of dIe earthlingMman and of the earth iLl tenns of our algebrosed science! It is only right that we speak of 'mimodramatic expressions' and not 'myths" or 'legends'. The complete range of scientific values has to be revised and utilized.
Tradition has it that the hole from which the dust used to model the skull of the first Adiim was extracted, was not completely refilled when OllS skull was dLscovered OLl 'Calvary". the hill of the skull, before the Cross was planted. And that is why, on our crucifixes, which too often are bereft of all living, paysan tradition, one sometimes sees two beings crucified: the flesh and blood of God who became an AdamMEarthling-man, and - nailed to his feet - a skull and two tibia, therefore, dIe dust of the Adam-
EarthlingMlllan who wanted to become God." (Jousse 2000:400)
o Galilee - Palestine - Galilean ethnic milieu - Palestine paysan milieu - Oral Style
(ethnic milieu) [WrittcnMstylc ethnic milieu))booklsl
While Jousse recorded data il1ustraring the incidence the Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm in et/mic milieu ... worldwide. he demonstrates the operation of fhe Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm in close analysis of mnemonic fexrs from Oral-style Palestine, the inference being Ihat similar close analysis can
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be pe/formed 011 ml1elllOIllC Oral-s~)'le leXIS /17 mher el/mic milieus 1I'/lh SlImlm' eVidence of rhe OperC/l1011
(!f"
lIIemOl~\'-S/lppOI"llVt! sll"llCIUre In hI/man expression Jousse was cons((lIIlly aware C?f (he need laemphaSl!ie Ihe (lnlhrop%?,lcal oriel1lclI/on (?f /lIS Sfl/C(l'. no(wlfhsf(Jndll1?, Its applicatIOn and demonstrollon in ellmic milieus: super./icwlly d~l1erenl oulcomes in terms of el/mic langllage. codes and symbols do not negale Ihe underl),lI1g synlhesis allhe level oflhe Anthropology ofGesle and Rhythm
JOlIsse iden/~lies the G(lliIee-P(lleSlillc re!!,/On
0/
two thollsand years ago as an Or(ll-style p(lysan ethnic milieu par excellence. While Ihe populace were largely poverly-stricken seribally illiterate p(lys(ln speakers of an omllangllage, they were consequently, and sign(ficantly. richly traditioned in the age-old recitatives of ,heir Oral-s~l'le cltllure. !IIilerare they might have been. bllt ignorant they were nol. These characterlslics made th/!)' mWeu an excellent slIbjeG·t0/
research interest Jar JOllsse principally because it so excel/enlly demonstrtlled IllS theory of the Anthropology oJGestc and Rhythm.Exmnples of Usage
• "My in-depth studies have led me to hypothesise that the great primordial law which flourished in the Palestinian ethnic milieu, is the traditional milieu par excellence. It will therefore come as no surprise to discover that the great Nabis appear to have been eminent 'Mimers'. When they wanted to demonstrate that the town was t.o be destroyed, they took a clay pot and broke it. Was the kingdom to be divided up? TIle Nabi took his new coat and rent it in ten parts. "TIlUS will the city be destroyed ...
lllUS will the Kingdom be divided up"." (Jousse 2000: 139)
• "I will focus my present anthropological research on the ancient Palestinian ethnic milieu because it is so particularly suffused with the experiences of secular Oral Portage, while, ironically. being profoundly ignored by anthropologists. Until recently, the study of all the prodigious successes of Palestinian OraJ Portage were either subjected to linle more than ethnic misinterpretation, or were seen by specialists of an overly-bookish Graeco-Latinicist slant, as insoluble pseudo-problems. Humanity'S expression of his civilization in writing was neither immediate nor global. With the civilization of global gesll/ol expression as its original starting point, humanity expressed itself dynamically for a long time in the Oral Civilization. It would therefore be completely lUlscientific to study a Hillel and a Mohammed in the same way that one is in the habit of studying Plato or Cieero." (Jousse 2000:216)
• "The Palestinian milieu was the pedagogicalmilicu par excellence. Everything in Israel was organised to guide man. The aim was always to in-fonn living beings. Everything cohered in this living pedagogy:
spontaneous mnemonics and volunta.ry mnemotechnics were imbricated and mutually supportive. Israel was essentially a milieu of instructors, the source of which was the All-Mighty who was All-Knowing and All-Teaching." (Jousse 2000:259)
• "The Palestinian ethnic milieu is rooted deeply in a living gestual tradition: to try and approach it anned with the met.hods of a Graeco-Latinicist philologist indicates a preconceived, intrinsic resistance to any real understanding. What we fmd in the Graeco-Latin 'algebrosed' books has been solely responsible for most of our shaping and, it must be admitted, 'mis-shaping'. By comparison, the traditions of the Palestinian milieu challenge us with the most infonnative pedagogics. In studying the Palestinian milieu, we are unwittingly touching upon the vast gestual pedagogics of a nat.ion which carried its history through the ages with, and within, itself." (Jousse 2000: 140)
• "TIle Palestinian ethnic milieu, then, proves to be the ethnic milieu of comparison par excellence, of the Mashal (= proverb, parable). So we understand why, from earliest antiquity, the favoured Palestinian RJlythmo-catechists were called Mashalists. Continuing the ancient tradition, lesho1l3,
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himself a celebrated Rhythmo-catechist, was really and essentially too, a Mashalist, but a Mashalist who targumized formulaically." (Jousse 2000:224)
• "In the conclusion of "Father, Son and Paraclete in the Palestinian ethnic milieu" (Part 11, Chapter I), I
will demonstrate the extent to which the Gallo-Galilean Tradition has 'infonned' and 'rhythmised' all my muscles, the muscles of a young receptive Sarthois child." (Jollsse 2000:45)
• "What we see here is typical of the 'Oral-style' Traditions of the Nabis of dIe Palestinian ethnic milieu. These are bilateralised 'Global Style' gestes in continuous re-play and opposition." (Jousse 2000:250)
• "By memorising and balancing dle traditionally bilateralised 'limbs' of the ancestral proverbs, ill the limbs of his own individual physical body, the bera trained himself in dIe laws of his ethnic style. TIle Palestinian O"al style was, fundamentally and in essence, generalised proverbial style. 111is explains why there is such a strange familiarity found in all the Palestinian Oral Styles, which emerged from a great variety of mouths of individuals separated widely in time and space. One could say - and one would be right - dlat dley were all taught in the same paternal house. This is because the whole ofdleir me/id, or balancing musculature, and the whole of their nafsha or reciting d1roat, was modelled by d1e same expressive traditional gestures within d1e heart of the family. From this point, it is possible to rediscover, and to classify, not only dIe propositional fomlUlae, but also the fonnulaic structures, at all levels of greatness." (Jousse 2000:508)
• "It has been said very rightly: 'The women of Nazareth who go to the fountain with dleir pitchers on
their shoulders or on their heads, Rhythmo-melodise melodies which were rhythmed maybe two thousand years ago or more .. .' We were not intent on doing any archeology, but on taking up once again the mechanism of memorisation and recitation according to dle laws of the living Oral Style."
(JoLlsse 2000:209)
• "We will see that the etemal Memra, Bera of the Abba, will make himself 'flesh and blood', i.e.
anthropos; that this anthropos will be specified ethnically as Galilean; dlat in dle Galilean ethnic milieu, he will distinguish himself as a Rabbi, i.e. an instructor, a teacher, and the eternal Word will be incarnated in the tool of the ethnic word.
Rabbi Jeshoua, the Memra incamated, is the Word ofdle All-powerful One Who Speaks:
Dixit et faCIa SIIIII mO/ufavit el crealQ sunl.
He spoke and things He gave a command and camc imo tx:ing things were created.
111at is the essence of d1e Memra. So, we will not be astonished to see this incarnated Memra one day saying, 'Let it be!'; not widl reference to the light, but to the bread: 'Let it be flesh'; and to the wine, 'Let it be blood'; and he will say to his apprehenders: 'Prehend (take) and eat... Prehend and drink ... Continue to perfonn dlis syndlesis of coherent perfection.'" (Jousse 2000:581)
• "While the Druid instructors were handing on dleir lessons in this very 'rhythmo-catechetical fonn' in ancient Gaul, the Abbos or Rabbis or Mods were simultaneously 'traditioning' their lessons to dleir Beros or Ta/mid'! or Abdfts under the very same fonn, in Palestine. In our bookish language, dIe word 'catechism' proves to be the most exact translation of the pedagogical term 'Mishnah' or 'Oral-repetition- like-an-echo'.
The Abbfts or Rabbis or Mods were mishnalsts, catechists, and more specifically, rhythmo- catechists. I analysed their traditional pedagogical method anthropologically in Les Rabbis d'/srae/. Since then, this anthropological analysis has been verified and adopted by the best infonned specialists of Palestinian style. These specialists know, moreover, that the amiable, young Gennan philologist, Paul Gachter, has made dIe characteristic features of my anthropological discoveries in Palestinian Oral style his own, and has faithfully translated them into beautiful Latin: the primacy of Oral Tradition in Palestine, even at the beginning
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ollr era~ the pedagogical utilization of rhythm; the amplitude and fidelity of dle reciters' memory; the principal role of the Aramaic-Hellenic Metourgeman or Sunergos121
(the Iranslalor-interpreter), etc. -ne Anthropology of Gcste and Rhythm has, then, sllcceeded in restoring to Its nghtful place the pnmordlallmportance of the ancient 'Oral Tradition' of the PAleslinian Abbas or
Rabbis" (Jousse 2000:217) .
• "TIllS methodological and 'graphicallyformlllaic' essay by a gestual anthropologist was mainly aimed at other gestual anthropologists. It was immediately understood and used by specialists of human mechanics, such as Or Pierre Janet, Or Georges Oumas, Or Joseph Morlaas, Or Andre Ombredane and Or Pierre Lhennitte. Moreover, what proved most interesting to me as an observer ofgestes in the ethnic laboratory, was that this anthropological essay proved to be a sort of /e:a-book. Did it not, immediately, set off 'gestually graphic' reactions in a certain number of specialists who had monopolised the bookish study of Palestinism? lllese gestual and typographically registered. reactions revealed some very strange and troubling lacunae in Palestinian Anthropology; for example, on the fundamental issue of the persistence of the 'fonnulaic' Oral Style in Palesline at the beguUling of our era. But times have changed for the bookish study of Palestinian philology. Now, indeed, and sometimes without even the least reference to the anthropologist-discoverer, and almost as if the discovery was already conUllon knowledge, the Fonnulism of the Palestinian Oral style is publicly upheld to prove the authenticity of the Magnificat, the Ollr Father and the parables. And all of these in a host of serious philological commentaries ... So then, seeing that bookish philology itself invites me not to 'ignore everything about the laws of Oral Style and its constant successes in highly gifted individuals', let us use it in order to understand the Palestinian compositions from dle beginning of ollr era. Let us meet good fortune widl goodwill and let us continue to be ... anthropologists!" (Jousse 2000:324)
See also ./owise 2000: 263-26.1. 328. 367. 372 . .123 . .160. 535. in/er alia.
o
Gallic oral ethnic milieuIOrul-style ethnic milieu) IGalilceIIWritlen-sl~·le ethnic milieu) (hook/s)
JO/lsse grieved the loss of the Gallic Oral-style tradl/ions destroyed by Ihe ravages of imperial Rome described and decried by Camille Jllllian ...
• "I reproduce here pages viii to x of Camille Jullian's Preface to Dottin's The Language of Ga"I on the subject of dle irreparable loss of the oral masterpieces of dle literature of Gau!. The extract is somewhat long, but few readers will have ready access to this technical study. Even if it were to take them Iwenly years, all our schoolchildren and all our University students should revive the reciting Iradition of their young ancestors. They should leam by heart the factual records of this great historian who adds his weight and 'joins (in a scientific way) the resistance . of our illiterate traditionist paysans:
Regardless of any other harvests whieh await us. it is certain that Ihe Gallic language will remain eternally sacrificed \\ithin the science of languages Ihat are pas!. What will forever be missing is what we know of the contemporary languages, Latin or Greek: what we will miss is (he literature in verse or in prose: Ihis is to say. thal which would help us most 10 appreciale ils deep structure, its intellectual wonh, its role as an instrument of the hUlllan spirit. The longest documents Ihat we can possibly hope for will never be any more than the epigraphic, statistic, legal documcnts, and such popular graffiti.
The 1:lIlguage of Gaul will remain eternally a viclim. We will always be lempted to undereslimate Ihe services it has rendered to civilisalion. I am claiming services and civilisalion_
not because I am writing from the soil that used to be Gallic. not because of retrospective chauvinism, but from absolule conviclion. It is a bad scholar and a pitiful hislorian who judges the things of the past only according to ils remnants. One must also visualise their place in the world. Onc must however daring this expression may bc, guess 1»' reflection what they were worth. Here wc have a language. the Gallic language. whose domain has been nearly as large as that of Lalin and that of Greek. It was spoken from the foothills of the Grampian mountains to Ihe very top of Ihe Apennines, from the verges of the Elba 10 those of the Danube. It was understood near the Bosphorus and on the lda of Phrygia. And you cannot believe Ihal, in the
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hisl0~ orthe \\orld.this language pla~ed a role barel~ inrerior to the role or Latin and Greek -
\\ hen it has ser-cd as a communicativc link ror the thoughts and dCillings or nearly onc hundred million jXoplc? Ycs. ~ou illlS\\Cr. but there is nothing left or it. - What you have just said is
doubl~· unjust.
First you turn a chance result into a justilicmion ror condemnation. And thcn you rorgct that if it has left nothing.. it is not because il never produccd anything. I repeat with sadness and angcr: \\ rctchcd arc thc historians" ho only understand the past through its rcmnants: they kill it. I do bclic,·c. nOl just oncc. bul twicc. Thc Gallic language shared with primitive Indo- European the great misronunc or not being a written language: the Celts judged it more beautiful Illore noble. more pious to speak a language. to hear it and to remember it. This is not to say that thcy did not speak well Spoken languages. M. Meillet has told Ille. sometimes have superior beauties which written languages lack. All the rorms or literature were represented among the Gauls: rhetoric. in which all their war ehiers excelled: cosmogonic. historical or ethical epics composed by the Druids: lyrical poems or s.. ... tirical songs or the OOrds. I assure you that they had their equivalent or the lfiad or or Genesis. the Alellalles or the Odes of Pindar. 1 assure you that this literaturc was as rich and even richcr than that of Rome berore Ennius. The Gallic languagc rcwarded its users in full measure.
All that has disappearcd for ever. No historian of the future will ever know an~1hing of it.
One of the noblest chapters of the human spirit will be eternally hidden from us.
I cannot forgive Rome and Caesar for having been the cause of this intellectual massacre.
following so many other massacres. For. look! Charlcmagne thought to record thc popular SOllgs
of the Franks: and 1I0-olle in the Roman Empire had the least idea of transcribing the poems or the Dnlids or the vcrses or the bards? What sort of intelligence did these masters of the univcrse possess if they failed to recognise thc beaut)' of the works of the peoplc thcy had vanquished if they failed to understand their duty to conser-'e them? Nothing is a morc accurate measure of lhe incredible moral pettiness of the great Roman Empire than its disdain for any thoughts and letters \\ hich did not originate in Rome or Grcccc. Let us get rid once and for all of our conventional admiration for the imperial forms of the past. for sumptuous edifices which arc but facades. enveloping mostly the bloodied corpses of men and the agonies of mothers and countries.
For twenty years our Dmids taught the young Gallic Apprehenders their innumerable rhythmic traditions orally: where they once taught, the earth has truly been scorched and the voices have been smothered forever" (Jousse 2000: 465-467).
o
Gallo-Galilean tradition - Graeco-Latin civilisationIOral-st~·le ethnic milicullGalilcellGalilcan Oral St~·lcIIWrillen-st~·le ethnic milieu) Ibook/sl
JOllsse grieved the loss of the Gallic Oral-style traditions particlIlarly in the light of the survival 0/ 'he hands of the same Roman oppressors of 'he Cali/eat' Oral-style traditions. He recognises the resonances be/ween /he two cultures and advocates a reviv~ficalion
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Gallic civilisa/ion following the precepfs and practices of ancient Oral-style Galilee. and rejec/ing the Iiteracy-/oclIsed perspectives of Greece and Rome - /he Graeco-Latin civilisation.Examples of Usage
• "The Gallo-Galilean tradition and its irradiation, which we call a civilisation, propels, guides and unifies me ... Gaul, Galilee ... " (Jousse 2000:56)
• "In the conclusion of "Father, Son and Paraclete in the Palestinian ethnic Milieu" (Part 11, Chapter I), I will demonstrate the extent to whieh the GaJlo-Galilean Tradition has 'infomled' and 'rhythmised' all my muscles, the muscles ofa young receptive Sarthois child. ( ... )
We, traditionist paysans, are all very much like the mysterious Lascaux caves: a single ray of light is enough to illuminate in them the re-play of the living Mimodramas of the Ancestral Tradition.
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